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{"id":5244,"date":"2013-05-17T08:37:17","date_gmt":"2013-05-17T13:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markdroberts\/?p=5244"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:29:53","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T20:29:53","slug":"gatsby-draper-and-where-freedom-really-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markdroberts\/2013\/05\/17\/gatsby-draper-and-where-freedom-really-lies\/","title":{"rendered":"Gatsby, Draper, and Where Freedom Really Lies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This week I co-wrote and published a piece over at Christianity Today<\/em>\u00a0on Jay Gatsby and Don Draper<\/a>, the protagonists (not quite \u201cheroes\u201d) of\u00a0The Great Gatsby\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Mad Men<\/em>, two hot commodities in pop culture right now. There are some striking similarities between these men, despite the fact that Gatsby \u201clived\u201d forty years before Draper.<\/p>\n

After seeing Gatsby<\/em>\u00a0at a press screening last week, my co-writer and I felt there was some intuitive link between them, and we pushed it back and forth till we hit on something: worshiping self\u2014even if it looks like it\u2019s for others\u2014is a surefire way to the bad life.<\/p>\n

The trouble at root is this: Gatsby and Draper worship the\u00a0<\/em>image\u00a0of Gatsby and Draper, and don\u2019t love the people around them. They chose, with the freedom afforded them by the American experiment, to remake themselves in their own image and likeness. They took the ideas Sartre espouses and just <\/em>went\u00a0for it, wholesale; they looked the void in the eye and decided to walk away. But they couldn\u2019t get away from their core, their soul, who they really were. The self-image they worshipped could never fully eclipse the self-loathing that prompted them to re-create themselves in the first place.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019d love to hear what you think\u2014especially if you\u2019re familiar with either or both of the stories!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"