As relações de poder e sexualidade no romance O grande Gatsby, de Francis Scott Fitzgerald

Abstract

The present master’s degree dissertation carries out a literary historical analysis of the novel The Great Gatsby by the North-American writer Francis Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1925. Firstly, we analyze the sociocultural context of the time prior to the writing of the novel with its economical, religious, moral and social aspects which made up the foundations of the evolution of the culture and development of the United States as a nation. We then analyze the relations of power and sexuality among the characters of the novel based on the concepts of theoreticians Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu. We also address the social issues expressed by the authors of the time and the economical and technological changes of the beginning of the twentieth century, as well as the considerations of philosopher Herbert Marcuse on man ex machina and the causes and consequences of Prohibition Laws and their unfoldings. We then analyze the elements of the novel construction in its literary components: narrator, character, symbology and historical sociocultural aspects: the American dream, the concept of the self-made man and social mobility.