Modernist Heroes and Commodification of Heroines in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

Abstract

The Study aims at investigating the hero’s treatment with women in two American modernist narratives, Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. These modernist novels embody cultural embodiment of young people’s pursuit of American dream. Gatsby in love with Daisy in the Fitzgerald narrative and Henry in love with Catherine in the Hemingway fiction commodify the heroines that lead both of the heroes to a tragic end. The Fitzgerald hero dies of a gunshot of Wilson whereas the Hemingway hero is ultimately left after Catherine’s death at childbirth. The American dream, an individual’s pursuit of happiness through freedom and material prosperity leads them to nightmarish experience with death and violence. The researcher, taking insights and methods comprised of Luce Irigary’s theory of women as commodities and Victor Brombert’s concept of antiheroes, examines the differential relationships between the Hemingway hero and the Fitzgerald hero in their treatments with their heroines in their relationships with the heroines.