Date of Award
8-11-2020
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
First Advisor
Dr. Christopher Kocela
Second Advisor
Dr. Audrey Goodman
Third Advisor
Dr. Paul Schmidt
Abstract
This work discusses the protagonists, economic situations, and investigation of youth in The Great Gatsby and Less Than Zero within the context of Jean Piaget’s cognitive psychological terms “accommodation” and “assimilation.” Assimilation highlights the amoral activities and economics beholden to most members of society in the novels, while accommodation allows a voice amongst the turmoil to clash and express a clear vision of how society should be for the sake of others, maintaining agency, and producing an intelligent and stable populace. By inspecting the use of age in The Great Gatsby and the symbolism behind tanning in Less Than Zero, readers are introduced to protagonists who embody the Piagetian dynamic of accommodation in an otherwise assimilative society. I bridge these novels, eventually discussing what further work can be done through a Piagetian lens. I aim to show how this theory may be utilized in literature to dissect human nature, be it through economic excess or the critique of modern culture in retrospect.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/18524735
Recommended Citation
Simpson, Jeremy, ""You Can Disappear Here Without Knowing It": Excess, Accommodation, and Assimilation in The Great Gatsby and Less Than Zero." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2020.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/18524735
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