The rotten, the sick and the wellGenealogía conradiana de lo morboso en The Great Gatsby

Laburpena

ABSTRACT This article examines an element that has rarely been tackled by critics when discussing the influence of Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) on Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), to wit: the structure, development and ideological scope of the idea of the “morbid” as representation of dysfunctional communities that do not observe the principles of responsibility. The article posits a theoretical framework that develops the main features of Conrad’s idea of responsibility, which, in turn, resembles that of Friedrich Nietzsche and deviates notably from that of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). The said framework is then deployed in order to delve into the images of sickness and rottenness in Fitzgerald’s novel. As a conclusion, the article examines the difference between two sorts of responsibility: social and individual, for they are the main constituents of the ideological conflicts the novel features.