Knowledge through Fiction: Characters as Social Metaphors in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

Abstract: While it is common to relate to fictional characters, there is a common view that this is all that fiction can provide us with and that we cannot learn from fiction. There are arguments to support this claim, such as the no-evidence argument and the fiction-distortion argument. They claim that due to the nature of the production of fiction and fictional characters, we cannot learn from them. However, fictional characters can be used as a springboard to teach students about many different topics, such as historical periods, different cultures and attitudes. To do this, one should look at the characters as social metaphors. Characters as social metaphors work as labels to teach us about different social types that we can use to understand our friends and enemies. This effect is called the fiction-to-world relation by Noël Carroll and will be used in this essay to analyze different characters from The Great Gatsby and see what they can teach us about the 1920s in the U.S. The Great Gatsby works as a good base novel for this type of analysis because it was produced in the same era it depicts. Furthermore, this essay will fill a gap in research done relating to The Great Gatsby by using this type of text or character analysis and relating it to how it can be used in Swedish Upper secondary school in an effective way to reach the aims for English 7 set forth by Skolverket. As the text and specifically characters were subjected to the analysis, it became clear that one could see traits and trends that would give students insight into the 1920s. Furthermore, this newly acquired knowledge could be used as a springboard for further research for students to find out more about the attitudes, social class struggles and society in general during the roaring 20s.