THE GREAT AND THE GOOD.
The Great Gatsby and Le Grand Meaulnes: an essay.
I‟ve long held that the word plagiarism belongs mainly
in the lexicon of hysterics or world-weary cynics. I feel
ill at ease with a word that seems to carry with it the
emotive language of finger-pointing and accusations of
fraud, so for this reason I have hesitated for many years
before making such a claim against F. Scott Fitzgerald, the
author of what is arguably one of the finest novels of the
twentieth century, The Great Gatsby.
So when, by chance, I first read Alain-Fournier‟s Le
Grand Meaulnes soon after I finished reading The Great
Gatsby for the first time, I was immediately struck by the
remarkable similarities between the two books. Looking
closer I have become convinced that the resemblance goes
further than mere coincidence.
This would not be the first of such accusations to be
leveled at Fitzgerald. In his fine book Invented Lives,
James R. Mellow points out that, when writing a review of
The Beautiful and Damned, Gilbert Seldes, the critic, suggests that Fitzgerald “had been running so closely on
the heels of Edith Wharton‟s recent novels that he had been
skirting plagiarism.” Mellow also observes that when
Scott‟s own wife, Zelda, reviewed the book in the New York
Tribune she “charged the author with stealing passages from
her old diary, paraphrasing and editing segments of her old
letters. There was a good deal in the book, she said, that
seemed vaguely familiar. “In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald… seems to
believe that plagiarism begins at home””
Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby in the South of
France in the summer of 1924. He and Zelda rented a villa
in Valescure, just above St Raphael on the Riviera. At this
time the summer was out of season so the rent was cheap, an
important factor to the couple as they were broke, and
Scott was already borrowing money from Scribners, the
publisher, against the royalties of the novel he had yet to
write. He also needed to escape the distracting influence
of his friend and drinking partner Ring Lardner, and the
rest of the Great Neck crowd from Long Island.
But even in the South of France the pressures on
Fitzgerald, both creatively and financially, were enormous.
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He was still spending money freely. The Fitzgeralds had
fallen in with a wealthy circle of people, and it was not
in Scott‟s nature to shy away from prodigality in such
company. Also his reputation as a writer and celebrity were
fading, and he had written nothing of real substance for
two or three years.
He had written to Max Perkins, his editor at Scribners,
before leaving Long Island in the spring of 1924, promising
great things and asking for Perkins‟ patient indulgence:
“It is only in the last four months that I‟ve realized how
much I‟ve, well, almost deteriorated in the three years
since I finished The Beautiful and Damned. The last four months of course I‟ve worked but in the two years – over
two years – before that, I produced exactly one play, half
a dozen short stories and three or four articles – an
average of about one hundred words a day. If I‟d spent this
time reading or travelling or doing anything – even staying
healthy – it‟d be different, but I only spent it uselessly,
neither in study nor in contemplation but only in drinking
and raising hell generally….So in my new novel I‟m thrown
directly on purely creative work – not trashy imaginings as in my stories but the sustained imagination of a sincere
yet radiant world. So I tread slowly and carefully and at
times in considerable distress. This book will be a
consciously artistic achievement and must depend on that as
the first books did not.”
So it was that Fitzgerald committed himself
wholeheartedly, and to some extent desperately, to writing
the novel that was so vital in rekindling his career. As
Zelda put it: “…Scott has started a new novel and retired
into strict seclusion and celibacy.”
Le Grand Meaulnes was the only completed novel written
by Alain-Fournier, and published in 1913. Fournier showed
great promise as a writer but was tragically killed in the
very first weeks of the First World War, of which he once
said, “This war is fine and great and just.” He was shot in
the head leading his men in an attack against a German
stronghold just seven weeks after the outbreak of
hostilities, and less than two weeks before his twenty-
eighth birthday. The same age, incidentally, that
Fitzgerald was when he wrote Gatsby.
He was himself a true romantic idealist, and the
central theme of his book, Meaulnes‟ doomed pursuit of his
ideal love Yvonne de Galaise, was based on Fournier‟s own
fantasy love of Yvonne de Quievrecourt, a beautiful young
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aristocratic girl he met casually several years earlier in
a Paris street.
To begin examining the points where the two novels
converge it is necessary to start with the titles: “Le
Grand Meaulnes” and “The Great Gatsby”. They are the same.
Scott Fitzgerald, in letters to Max Perkins, was
constantly trying to convince his editor that alternative
titles were more effective. In letters dated between
October ‟24 and March ‟25 he suggested Gold Hatted Gatsby,
Trimalchio In West Egg, Trimalchio, On The Road To West Egg,
The High-bouncing Lover, Gatsby, Under The Red, White and
Blue, and Among Ash-heaps and Millionaires.
Throughout all this Perkins stuck to his guns. The
title would be The Great Gatsby, which was the one Perkins preferred from the beginning. The alternative titles seem
to us now almost ludicrous. But Fitzgerald appears to hold
an inordinate desire that his book should not be called The
Great Gatsby.
For the next significant point we need go no further
than the opening page. Both of these novels are written in
the first person, from the point of view of an involved and
influential observer. In many critical analyses The Great
Gatsby has been compared to Conrad‟s Heart of Darkness or
Melville‟s Moby Dick. They are both the story of a man of
destiny seeking his own Holy Grail, written in the first
person but observed from a distance. The difference is that
both Francois Seurel in Meaulnes and Nick Carraway in Gatsby are actively influential, through their friendship
with the hero, to the outcome of the book. They are not
just crew members on a ship - an important distinction.
Equally both narrators, as close friends and
confidants of the heroes of these stories, are given a rare
and privileged insight into their hearts and souls. Given
that the two principle characters are created as private
and enigmatic individuals with a great degree of self-
sufficiency, and about whom there is much curiosity and
speculation, this becomes an important point for
consideration.
Robert Gibson says in his introduction to the Harrap
edition of Le Grand Meaulnes: “Seurel‟s voice, then, is the first and last that the reader hears and he is obliged to
listen to it almost throughout. The effect of this upon the
atmosphere and mood of the novel is momentous because
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Seurel is not, as has more often than not been assumed, a
neutral and passive observer, but a committed participant,
intimately involved in the action, with a very real and
positive personality of his own.”
The two narrators each have their own story to tell,
which, although completely separate, run parallel to that
of the protagonist; and they each tell their story very
consciously as a novel. We are frequently reminded of this
fact, as at the beginning of Gatsby we learn of “the man
who gives his name to this book” and later, after relating
some of Gatsby‟s history Nick writes; “He told me all this
very much later, but I‟ve put it down here with the idea of
exploding those first wild rumours about his antecedents,
which weren‟t even faintly true.” Towards the end of Le
Grand Meaulnes, as Seurel is reading a journal kept by
Meaulnes, he says “…I read the lines which explained so
much and which I reproduce word for word…”
Much of the story they tell is as related to them by
Gatsby or Meaulnes, so that we are given the protagonists
view of events as well as the narrators, a convenient
device for both writers to enable them to give personal
insight from whichever perspective they choose. As Nick
Carraway puts it: „I was within and without, simultaneously
enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of
life.‟
Each narrator also takes pause in his narrative to
recap on what he has written to date. Francois asks the
question:
Have I told the story badly? At any rate it fails to
produce the effect I expected.
Similarly Nick wonders whether he has given us an
accurate account:
Reading over what I have written so far, I see I
have given the impression that the events of three
nights several weeks apart were all that absorbed me.
On the contrary, they were merely casual events in a
crowded summer…
It was not Fitzgerald‟s original intention to write in the first person at all. He abandoned earlier drafts of the
story which he wrote while still living on Long Island,
although elements were to turn up later in the short
stories Absolution and Winter Dreams, both of which are
written in the third person.
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In his essay The Great Gatsby and the Great American
Novel Kenneth E. Eble says: „The choice of Nick Carraway as
narrator was probably not made until some jelling of the
essential story took place in Fitzgerald‟s mind.” It is my
belief that this choice was made after reading Le Grand
Meaulnes.
The similarities, however, are not confined to their technical structure or titles. There are a number of
symbols common to both books, and although Alain-Fournier
was recognised as a symbolist writer Fitzgerald was
certainly not. The books share a constant use of colour, as
well as light and dark among their symbolist elements.
One of the most immediate and obvious of these is the green light. Augustine Meaulnes had accidently stumbled
upon “the mysterious domain” after setting off on a wild
adventure and getting lost. Hiding in an upstairs room he
awoke at night as “…a dim light filtered through the
hangings of the alcove.” Looking out he noted “The window
had been opened, and two green Chinese lanterns hung in the
embrasure.” These were placed by two shadowy figures to
guide Frantz, the heir to the domain, across “a vast frozen
plain devoid of landmarks” to the place where he was to be
married. In The Great Gatsby the green light appears
serving an identical symbolic function. When Nick first
sees Gatsby he is standing in the moonlight looking out
across the bay: “Involuntarily I glanced seaward – and
distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute
and far away, that might have been at the end of a dock.”
In fact the dock was Daisy Buchanan‟s, the girl Gatsby
loved and the object of his obsessive quest. But to Gatsby
the green light takes on a meaning of its own. It almost
becomes the quest itself, his grail. When later Daisy has
been reunited with Gatsby at his mansion:
“If it wasn‟t for the mist we could see your home
across the bay,” said Gatsby. “You always have a green
light that burns all night at the end of your dock.”
Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he
seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it
had occurred to him that the colossal significance of
that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the
great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had
seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had
seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again
a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects
had diminished by one.
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Then, on the very last page, the green light takes
its significant place in one of the finest closing passages
in modern literature:
And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown
world, I thought of Gatsby‟s wonder when he first
picked out the green light at the end of Daisy‟s dock.
He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream
must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to
grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind
him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the
city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on
under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the
orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It
eluded us then, but that‟s no matter – to-morrow we
will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one
fine morning –
So we beat on, boats against the current,
borne back ceaselessly into the past.
When writing critical guides to The Great Gatsby
essayists invariably draw comparisons with T S Elliott‟s
The Wasteland, usually with reference to “the valley of
ashes”. In its own way “the great wet barnyard of Long
Island Sound” can be seen in the same way. The valley of
ashes is “a desolate area of land” that must be negotiated
by Tom Buchanan, Daisy‟s faithless husband, in order that he might get to New York for his sordid liaison with his
mistress, Myrtle Wilson, who actually lives in this bleak
place. Long Island Sound is that stretch of water that
separates Gatsby from Daisy. So both places represent a
barrier between the lovers and the object of their desire.
In Le Grand Meaulnes we learn that Augustine has set
off on an adventure but very soon becomes lost: “Then once
more he was surrounded by a vast frozen plain devoid of
landmarks”. He struggles on but without comfort: “In the
whole of the Sologne it would have been hard to find a more
desolate spot than the region in which he now found
himself.” Eventually he comes upon a remote chateau in
which, he is to discover, lives the beautiful, aristocratic
Yvonne de Galais, with whom he will fall deeply in love. He
finds shelter in the house, and, as mentioned earlier, his
sleep is interrupted by two shadowy figures, one of whom
says, “What‟s the point of showing a light on a mere
stretch of country – a desert as you might say?”
Thus we become aware that the wasteland is a symbol
common to both books. This point is further reinforced
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later in Le Grand Meaulnes: “On one side of us is an
expanse of waste land where the chateau and it‟s
outbuildings formally stood.”
The geographical settings for these books are not,
In however, completely devoid of any recognisable landmark.
Le Grand Mealnes, Seurel is sauntering along a country lane
in the company of his friend, Jasmin Delouche and is given
a clue as to the whereabouts of the lost domain:
As we approached the top of the hill where two
great stones mark what was said to be the sight of an
ancient fortress, he began to speak of estates he had
visited and particularly of a more or less abandoned
domain in the neighbourhood…
As Nick rents a small house on Long Island he describes
two landmarks in particular:
…where there are, among other natural curiosities,
two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the
city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and
separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most
domesticated body of salt water in the Western
hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound.
These „natural curiosities‟ bear a striking resemblance
to the stones in Alain-Fournier‟s story that denote the proximity of the lost domain.
Each book contains two parties in particular that are
described in detail, and in both cases they are significant
turning points in the narrative. The first party in Le
Grand Meaulnes is seen through the eyes of Augustine after he has wandered in by accident, following his disastrous
adventure. The chateau is lavishly made up to look like „a
palace en fete‟ and populated largely by children and mild old folk, all in extravagant costumes, and apparently
allowed to behave as they pleased. He overhears some of
them speaking: ”They‟ve given us carte blanche, haven‟t
they!” and: “You know very well we‟re planning the party to
suit ourselves.”
Meaulnes had little trouble integrating as: “The guests
seemed hardly to know one another. They must have come from
distant towns or remote parts of the country.” But not only
did the guests not know each other, they seemed to know
little of the person in whose honour the party was being
given:
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“Do you know her?” the older boy asked his comrade,
an urchin with a round head and candid eyes.
“No, but my mother said she had a black dress and a
muslin collar and looked like a pretty pierrot.”
“Who does?” asked Meaulnes.
“Why Frantz‟s fiancee, of course…that he‟s gone to
fetch…”
When later Meaulnes inquired further:
“Is his fiancee as pretty as they say?”
They looked at him as if not knowing how to reply.
No one but Frantz had seen the girl.
But none of this lack of familiarity was allowed to get in
the way of a good time:
In the passages groups were forming for round
dances and farandoles. Somewhere strings were playing a
minuet…Meaulnes, his head half buried in the collar of
his cloak which stood out like a ruff, was loosing all
sense of identity. Infected by the gaiety he too joined
in the pursuit of the pierrot through corridors that
were now like the wings of a theatre where the
spectacle has spilled over from the stage. And well
into the night he was lost in the throng taking part in
a joyous masquerade. He would open a door and find that
a magic-lantern show was in progress, with children
loudly clapping their hands…Or in a salon crowded with
dancers he would get into conversation with some young
fop and pick up hints about the costumes to be worn on
the ensuing days…
The following day the fun moves to the lake:
Other guests were now standing about under trees.
Then three pleasure-boats came alongside to take on the
passengers.
And later:
In deep silence they drew away from the shore.
Nothing could be heard but the putt of the engine and
the wash from the bows.
The resemblance to Gatsby‟s first party as attended by
Nick , and seen through his eyes as a stranger, is
undeniable. No expense is spared in making the house look
extravagantly festive:
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…a corps of caterers came down with several hundred
feet of canvas and enough coloured lights to make a
Christmas tree of Gatsby‟s enormous garden.
Nick: “…wandered around rather ill at ease among the
swirls and eddies of people I didn‟t know….” There were:
“…introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic
meetings between women who never knew each other‟s names….”
And the guests, it appears, behave just as they like: ”I
like to come,” Lucille said. “I never care what I do, so I
always have a good time.”
But of the host little is known:
As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my
host, but the two or three people of whom I asked his
whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way, and
denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements,
that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail
table..
Later, as Nick is settling in he becomes surrounded
by wild speculation about his host‟s mysterious past:
“Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once.”
and, “It‟s more that he was a German spy during the
war.”
But all in all, and despite the fact that they were
among strangers, the guests‟ enjoyment of the party was
unconfined:
There was dancing now on the canvas in the garden;
old men pushing young girls backwards in eternal
graceless circles, superior couples holding each other
tortuously, fashionably, and keeping in the corners –
and a great number of single girls dancing
individualistically or relieving the orchestra for a
moment of the burden of the banjo or the traps. By
midnight the hilarity had increased. A celebrated tenor
had sung in Italian, and a notorious contralto had sung
in jazz, and between the numbers people were doing
„stunts‟ all over the garden, while happy, vacuous
bursts of laughter rose toward the summer sky.
Earlier the fun had been out on the bay:
I watched his guests diving from the tower of his
raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach
while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the sound,
drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam.
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As the two parties draw to a close there were scenes
of drunkenness. In Le Grand Meaulnes Augustine observes:
But since this meal was after all the concluding
feast in what should have been a wedding celebration,
some of the more uncouth visitors, no doubt spurred on
by wine, had burst into song. And as he made his way
back Meaulnes heard vulgar songs desecrating a park
which for two days had harboured much grace and many
marvels. It was a portent of disintegration.
Earlier, at that same party, Meaulnes had been
immersed in a deep and wonderfully peaceful contentment:
A piano was being played in an adjacent room.
The door stood open, and out of curiosity Meaulnes
went over to see who it was. He stood looking into a
small drawing-room. A young woman, or possibly a mere
girl – her back was turned – a reddish-brown cloak
over her shoulders, was playing softly some simple
familiar airs or part songs. On a sofa near the piano
six or seven small boys and girls sat as primly as
children in a picture, listening and “being good” as
children are when it is getting late…
To Nick Carraway‟s eyes a similar scene had an
altogether more decadent feel:
The large room was full of people. One of the
girls in yellow was playing the piano, and beside her
stood a tall, red-haired young lady from a famous
chorus, engaged in song. She had drunk a quantity of
champagne, and during the course of her song she had
decided, ineptly, that everything was very, very sad
– she was not only singing, she was weeping too….
“She had a fight with a man who says he‟s her
husband,” explained a girl at my elbow.
I looked around. Most of the remaining women
were now having fights with men said to be their
husbands.
Now both parties are developing this “portent of
disintegration”. And each party, whilst magical at their
height, end in scenes of pandemonium. In Le Grand Meaulnes
Augustine is preparing to leave when he is faced with a
tableau of chaos:
Under the window, out in the carriage yard,
there was a scene of utter confusion. Pulling, pushing,
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