The main characters in the novels The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Passing by Nella Larsen are both passing in the sense that they are trying to be something they are not, creating for themselves an illusion that they believe convinces other people that they possess an identity. Both books are set in the 1920s but in very different worlds, Gatsby in the world of the rich and would-be rich on Long Island, and Passing in Harlem in New York City. Each of the main characters--Jay Gatsby in the Fitzgerald work, Clare in the Larsen novel--is in the process of passing, of making a journey from one world to another, a journey that is thwarted in each case because it is a journey that is ultimately destructive.
Larsen is clear about what passing means to her as she writes about Clare,
She wished to find out about this hazardous business of "passing," this breaking way from all that was familiar and friendly to take one's chances in another environment, not entirely strange, perhaps, but certainly not entirely friendly (Larsen 157).
Clare thinks about the issue of passing. If Gatsby does so, we are not privileged to share in those thoughts, for while he is the subject of The Great Gatsby, he is not the central consciousness of the novel. The character of Jay Gatsby is used by the author to comment on the falseness of the accepted and even elevated aspect of the society in which he lives. Gatsby does not see the falseness of this social milieu and aspires to be part of it, and at the same time he is alienated from that society. The character of Gatsby is somewhat enigmatic, especially as perceived by other characters in the novel, and he is illuminated by his interactions with other characters who represent different aspects of the society to which he aspires. The story is told through the eyes of Nick Carraway, and how Carraway relates to Gatsby is especially important for what it conveys to the reader and for what...