The End of Longing: The Great Gatsby, To the Lighthouse, and Giovanni’s Room

This course focuses on three classic twentieth-century novels: F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, and James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room. The plot in each of these novels pivots on satisfaction deferred or denied for too long, and on repeatedly postponed or indefinitely delayed access to some longed for good: adventure, knowledge, beauty, love, or thriving. All three novels take a complex stance toward longing, toward its immersing the mind in the imagined presence of the absent good—in part portraying longing's ennobling, developmental power; in part revealing its self-serving, fraudulent vanity; and in part honoring its innocent hope. This course analyzes that complexity and probes its ambiguities to discover their thematic and stylistic power.