• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.61-76
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• 2008

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby has been interpreted to be saturated with the lamentation over the distortion and evaporation of the American dream. The application of Friedrich Nietzsche's mythic concept of Dionysus, discussed in The Birth of Tragedy, surfaces a fresh layer of the novel, subverting the established pessimistic reading. To focus on a peripheral character, Myrtle Wilson, through Nietzsche's theory brings forth an optimistic vision of the author. A Dionysian ecstasy so powerfully overwhelms Myrtle that she perceives Tom, the very picture of corruption and crime in Fitzgerald's text, as a benefic liberator. Her impassioned perception of Tom enables her to soar over both legal or moral censorship and her realistic confinement. Myrtle's amoral passion endows her with the vital desire to live. Her Dionysian dynamo embodies the core of new version of the American dream Fitzgerald suggests as a measure to reanimate the lost generation of his nation.