Which scholar is credited with identifying Gatsby's allegory of the conflict between evil materialism and pure romanticism?

• A. Claude Le Fustec
• B. Maureen Corrigan
• C. Michaelis
• D. Nick Carraway

Answer: (A)

The idea being tested is how Gatsby uses symbolic conflict to critique how wealth and longing can pull in opposite directions. Claude Le Fustec is identified as the scholar who frames Gatsby as an allegory of the clash between evil materialism and pure romanticism. In this view, Gatsby’s ascent through money and social appearances is at odds with the genuine, almost naive hope he has for winning Daisy and recapturing a romantic ideal. The novel populates this tension with symbols—the green light, parties, and the rise and fall of Gatsby’s wealth—showing how material success can corrode or obscure the very dream it seems to promise. Le Fustec’s reading emphasizes that the tragedy lies in the failure of that material world to sustain the romantic vision, rendering Gatsby’s dream illusory and the American Dream as depicted in the Jazz Age critique. Other critics discuss themes and symbols in Gatsby, but this attribution foregrounds the explicit framing of the story as an allegory about that specific struggle between material power and romantic aspiration.