Holocaust Definition Great Gatsby |link| Review

To the modern reader, the word “holocaust” is inseparable from the systematic, state-sponsored genocide of six million Jews by Nazi Germany. It is a proper noun, capitalized and singular: The Holocaust . However, when F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby in 1925, the word carried a much older, more general definition. Derived from the Greek holokauston ( holos , meaning “whole,” and kaustos , meaning “burnt”), a holocaust originally referred to a sacrificial offering that was completely consumed by fire. Only after the horrors of World War II did the term acquire its current, devastatingly specific meaning.

In a cruel irony that Fitzgerald could not have foreseen, our modern, capitalized definition of The Holocaust has made his use of the word seem callous or hyperbolic. But in truth, both uses share a chilling common root: the image of something precious, human, and whole being consumed entirely by fire—whether by the ovens of Auschwitz or by the green light of a dream that was never truly alive. holocaust definition great gatsby

The “greater purpose” for this sacrifice is the American Dream itself, as embodied by the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. Gatsby has spent his entire life constructing a “holocaust” of his own identity: he sacrificed James Gatz of North Dakota, burning away his past, his family, and his morals to create the golden, self-made god of West Egg. He offers up his integrity for wealth, his truth for a lie, and his future for a single, impossible goal: repeating the past with Daisy Buchanan. To the modern reader, the word “holocaust” is