Would you describe Meyer Wolfsheim as an important character in ‘The Great Gatsby? Explain your view.
| 'Everything about Wolfsheim creates sinister and suspicious connotations, from his lackluster enunciation, to his ‘cuff buttons’ made from ‘human molars’.' -M. Shanahan |
Despite Meyer Wolfsheim’s limited presence in the novel,
he’s quite an important character in my opinion. Wolfsheim is a strong symbol
of crime and underhandedness in ‘The Great Gatsby’. Being the person that
allegedly fixed the World Series in 1919, Wolfsheim represents what happens
when one crosses the line of greed and corruption that every character in the
novel flirts with so readily. Everything about Wolfsheim creates sinister and
suspicious connotations, from his lacklustre enunciation, to his ‘cuff buttons’
made from ‘human molars’. He’s the
epitome of crime and corruption in the novel. Wolfsheim also offers the reader
a new perspective of what seemed to be an un-biased narrator. Something of the up-most importance in understanding both Nick and the novel. While Nick tries to have a lack of bias, he clearly takes an immediate dislike
to Meyer Wolfsheim. His description of Wolfsheim as a ‘flat-nosed Jew’ with
‘tiny eyes’ highlights an immediate dislike of Wolfsheim as well as providing
an ugly stereotype, at a time when anti-Semitism in the USA was at an all-time
high.
Wolfsheim’s presence in the novel therefore forces the reader to ask
questions about Nick. But it creates even more questions about Gatsby.
Wolfsheim is a portentous symbol of Gatsby’s sinister side and shady affairs. In
Wolfsheim we get a brief glimpse of what’s behind the mystery phone-calls and
money. For the first time in the novel, the reader has to seriously ask
questions about the eponymous protagonist. These questions had been building
throughout, but Gatsby’s association with a man like Wolfsheim brings them
crashing to the fore. It’s the lack of guilt or excuses about Wolfsheim that
highlights the looseness of Gatsby’s morals in this regard. He even conveys a sense of admiration for
Wolfsheim’s success, explaining that he isn’t in jail, because ‘he’s a smart
man.’ At this point in the novel, the reader grasps how Gatsby made his new
money and begins to understand the depth of his false persona. From this point
on, Gatsby isn’t the same; the new questions that plague the reader remain with
him to the very end. While it mightn’t affect the reader’s overall opinion of
Gatsby, he isn’t seen in quite the same light. In this, we find the importance
of Meyer Wolfsheim. For, despite his
limited presence, he forces us to ask questions of Nick and Gatsby, as well as,
of ourselves. For representing an awakening to the corruption and greed in the
novel, I found Meyer Wolfsheim to be a very important character.