New Criticals


In other words, "Thin line 'tween heaven and here."

D's penetrating analysis of Gatsby is hardly an argument against human freedom, nor is it an excuse for taking responsibility for one's actions. If anything, it is call to responsibility, a mature acknowledgement that the "I" is moreso a, to use philosopher Simon Critichley's term, "dividual" than "individual," split between who they are and the "infinite demand" of who they want to be. It is in this space that the "I" becomes moral. The "frontin" that D points to is the same critique Socrates levels against the Sophists and the "unexamined life," Heidegger against inauthenticity, and Sartre against "bad faith." In his willingness to take responsibility, to "do the time," in his courage to heed the "demand" of ethics, D, like Camus' Sisyphus, takes on the insescapable burden, this heavy stone of his past, and makes it his own, and in doing so, becomes dignified, noble, free.