Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald were both published in 1925, and both take a similar view of the society of the time and of the ills besetting that society. The city in each becomes a metaphor for a mechanistic and materialistic society. The city in each is also a source of ambivalent feelings, for each writer is both attracted to the energy and life of the city while also seeing it as a microcosm for all the ills of American society. The ideal of the American dream in both novels proves to be an empty dream. For Dos Passos, this sort of society is set against the aspirations of the artist in particular, but more broadly against the aspirations of everyone. For Fitzgerald, the artist is equated with the romantic, and the romantic--such as Jay Gatsby--is lost in that sort of society. for Gatsby, the dream proves illusory, and the reality is the hypocritical society of West Egg. For characters like Ellen Thatcher in Manhattan Transfer, one who reaches the pinnacle of success as she has intended, the dream proves to be false.
Gatsby is indeed seen in the Fitzgerald novel very much through the eyes of others, who speculate about him even as they also tend to pigeonhole him as someone who is not really part of their class. One such character is that of Jordan Baker, who serves several purposes in the course of the story. She is the means by which Nick Carraway is brought into the group that becomes so important to him and that he as an outsider can understand better than they do themselves. Her presence illustrates the problem of honesty and its importance in human relations. Her relationship with Nick parallels the relationship of Gatsby and Daisy to a degree, and the different outcomes serve to illuminate the foolishness of Gatsby's devotion to Daisy while offering a more realistic and rational example of how human beings should relate to one another.
Jordan is also with th...