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Examples Of Duality In The Great Gatsby

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Jeremy Doniger
Mrs. McInerny
English 10H
17 March 2015
The Nature of Duality in The Great Gatsby
The midwest is known for down-to-earth goodness, for wholesome, satisfying conceptions of morality that satisfied the masses of people who immigrated there in the 19th and 20th centuries. Morality, in that conventional, midwestern way, is merely a set of rules governing the difference between right and wrong - a simple duality. Dualistic thought suffices for us most because it is simple and it makes sense - actions are either right or wrong, people are either good or bad. The reason duality has human appeal is because it allows us to think of our lives without much complexity, without much potential for fearful or overwhelming existential thought. Most people in the world follow Judeo-Christian forms of religions because those religions establish conceptions of morality that present simple dualities. Actions are either moral or immoral; there is god, and there is the devil; there is heaven, and there is hell. Midwestern ethics derive directly from these modes of thought, and therefore Nick Carraway’s ethics also derive from those modes of thought. However, Nick, like so many others returning from World War One, is forced to question his existence in a way that is deeply unsettling, in a way that forces him to, if only for a summer, abandon the dualism associated with conventional midwestern thought. Ultimately, Nick becomes morally ambiguous not because his ‘moral’ decisions

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