In ‘The Great Gatsby’, the eponymous character encapsulates the ideal American construct of the self-made man: Gatsby is a manifestation of the notion that one can create their essence, this was potentially facilitated by a rejection and ultimately a severance from God due to the horrors of the First World War. The horrors of the war provided many a grounding to question the qualities of their chosen deity, as a result many became members of a new thought sweeping Europe and America: atheistic existentialism; the idea of one creating their own identity and purpose. Similarly, Nick was devastated by the war; he sarcastically refers to it as “that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War,” [ ] and suggests that the only God in the modern
