Saunders, Judith P. American Classics: Evolutionary Perspectives. Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2018.This month's discussion: Chapter Eight: "The Great Gatsby: An Unusual Case of Mate Poaching," pp. 138-174.
This essay is much longer than many of the others in Saunder's book, and it makes a much more complex argument. I give this essay high marks. I have to confess that I did not appreciate The Great Gatsby when I was assigned to read it in my youth. The evolutionary perspective is useful to more fully appreciating the point of the narrative.
Saunders' basic theme centers on the observed psychological phenomenon of self-deception. Humans can deceive themselves about their physical and social world, and this deception can cause them to work toward goals that are unrealistic. This self-deception can have adaptive value, as theorized by Robert Trivers, whom Saunders cites. For example, a high-risk strategy is easier to undertake if the actor is deluded into thinking success is likely.
In this novel, Gatsby is deluded about his relationship with Daisy. Prior to the time frame of the novel, Gatsby was a young man from the lower-middle class. Daisy was a beautiful young woman from a wealthy and respectable family. Entering the military in World War I, he hid his modest social position with his military rank, and he courted her. While he was serving in Europe, she dropped him and married the socially dominant Tom Buchanan. Saunders walks us through the reproductive logic, showing that Daisy's decision to drop Gatsby for Tom was rational. She also points out that the novel's readers would not find this story of Daisy's rational self-interest particularly interesting.
Saunders also uses the sexual strategy logic promoted by David Buss in his book Evolution of Desire to show that Tom's sexual infidelities are rational, as are Daisy's reactions to Tom's infidelities. Both Myrtle's sexual relationship with Tom and Daisy's sexual affair with Gatsby follow the logic of sexual strategy theory.
Gatsby, by contrast, is consumed by an irrational commitment to courting Daisy. He does this even though he has already lost her. He has deluded himself into thinking that Daisy is still a virginal girl who can become his faithful bride, even though she has been married for years and already has a child by Tom. Daisy has a sexual affair with Gatsby, but when she has to choose between Tom and Gatsby, she chooses to remain with Tom. Tom points out that Gatsby's wealth was not gained in a socially respectable way. She would still take a step downward socially if she exchanged Tom for Gatsby. Daisy continues to follow sexual strategy logic and behave rationally.
Saunders shows that, as detailed again by David Buss, Gatsby's behavior would be rational if Daisy really were a young woman looking for a committed marriage partner. He displays great wealth to attract her. He demonstrates persistence in courtship, combining loyalty and riches. Because his efforts are pointless, he takes on the quality of a tragic character. Like Don Quixote, he is chasing a fantasy. Saunders' point is that Gatsby's obsessive fidelity to Daisy seems idealistic, but it is based on evolutionary logic. Because his reasoning has become pathological, his behavior becomes tragic.
Saunders innumerates several misconceptions by Gatsby. One is that wealth equals social status. Another is that his ambition is not related to his reproductive fitness. As Saunders writes, "Men frequently speak of wives and offspring as if they were obstacles to success rather than proof of it" (162). She criticizes much of the scholarly criticism of Gatsby for missing this point in their discussions of the corruption of wealth. Fitzgerald links Daisy to the sirens of the Odyssey. Saunders points out "It comforts men to think that Helen's beauty or Circe's magic, rather than masculine ardor and male-male competition, caused the Trojan War or turned men into swine" (164).
Fitzgerald, at the end of the novel, draws a political and cultural analogy between Gatsby's self-delusion and the aspirations of European settlers to find a virgin and fertile land in America. Both will fall short of their ideal aspirations. Saunders points out that Gatsby's fantasies and the dreams of settlers were both motivated by reproductive fitness.
In Gottschall's book The Storytelling Animal, he describes the fact that we humans occupy a reality that is in part constructed from our mental projections. He says that we live in Neverland. Many successful leaders have created an aspirational world which their followers then have succeeded in bringing into actual existence through their collective effort. Steve Jobs was described as having a "reality distortion field" that convinced the employees of Apple to realize his plans. In Gatsby, this mentally and socially constructed Neverland is irreconcilably at odds with the physical world; in this instance, this mentally constructed world is on full display.
At the end of the novel, Daisy unintentionally but successfully rids herself of her rival, Myrtle, and Tom rids himself of his rival, Gatsby. The cynically rational actors triumph reproductively. The dead body of the dreamer Gatsby is floating in a swimming pool.
Saunders ends by arguing that, as other evolutionary literary critics such as Joseph Carroll have argued, this self-delusional myth-making is related to the human capacity to create stories and literature.
I have elsewhere argued that evolutionary literary criticism should include considerations of multilevel selection theory, such as the theory of the altruistic punisher. As is the case for many of her essays, Saunders only focuses on the evolutionary psychology related to individual fitness and not group fitness as hypothesized by multilevel selection theory. Nick is the cynical witness to tragically misplaced individual yearning.
