The King's Downfall
The Great Gatsby, The White Lotus, The United States of America
The Great Gatsby is celebrating its 100th birthday this month. For many, it’s a timeless classic that hasn’t been touched since high school. It’s a party theme, a Leonardo DiCaprio movie, a favorite book of people who don’t know what else to choose as their favorite book. Seeing as I hadn’t read the story since my 9th grade English teacher illuminated the “significance” of Daisy’s green light, I gave this book another read to celebrate its centenarian status.
The book holds up, and I’m not just saying that because green lights still mean “go.” The Great Gatsby is more relevant today than it has been in decades. It reflects a type of story that just wrapped up in the third season of The White Lotus. Not the hero’s journey, but the king’s downfall. And with the way things are going in the country right now, The Great Gatsby continues to predict our kingdom’s fate.
The Denial
In Season 3 of The White Lotus, Rick asks Jim Hollinger about his rise to power in Thailand. Hollinger says,
“When you're young, you want to be king of the hill. Then you get to be the king of the hill and you miss it when you were young and hungry and could swing free."
Jim is just beyond where we meet Jay Gatsby at the beginning of his story. Gatsby has clawed his way to the top through mostly illegal and unethical means, but his hunger is not satisfied yet. He wants Daisy. He gets Daisy, briefly, securing his position as king.
Typically, when we witness the king’s downfall, we meet him at the top. Bits and pieces of the king’s ascent are shared throughout the story, but we don’t see this struggle. We meet Logan Roy in Succession as the head of Waystar RoyCo. We meet Timothy Ratliff in The White Lotus as he checks his family into the beautiful White Lotus resort. We meet the Klein family in Big Little Lies at their beautiful California home.
Although Gatsby is the title character, I do want to mention Nick Carraway’s opening lines of the novel:
"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'"
For the sake of it being a catchy name, I will stick with the term “king’s downfall,” although this implies that the king comes from generational wealth or “old money.” Nick Carraway and Tom Buchanan come from old money. Gatsby, Jim Hollinger, and Logan Roy are “new money,” a status that is often unsustainable.
Threats and Denials
The lesson that comes up in each of these stories is that holding onto power is significantly more difficult than achieving it. Kings who lied, cheated, and stole to climb the hill can’t hide from their crimes when they’re exposed at the top of said hill. Their actions come back to haunt them, in the form of law enforcement, other men, or mortality. They all fall down, whether they see it coming or not.
S3E6 of The White Lotus is called, “Denials.” In it, various characters deny their wrongdoing: Jaclyn denies sleeping with Valentin. Timothy continues to deny that something is going wrong in his business. Saxon denies that he hooked up with his brother. The kings in these stories do what they can to deny, deny, deny until they can’t deny any longer. Gatsby lies about his rise to wealth—his name isn’t even Jay Gatsby. Logan Roy ignores his declining health and uses the phrase “no real person involved” to deny various incidents of wrongdoing.
These threats and denials build the tension in the story, raising the stakes higher and higher until the kings have nowhere to go but down.
The Queen’s Pressure
I mentioned the Kleins in Big Little Lies because I can’t get Renata Klein’s, “I will not not be rich” out of my head. She says it to her husband Gordon after he’s been arrested for fraud and their wealth is threatened. My favorite characters in these stories are never the kings but the queens. I love watching them raise the stakes even higher and put immense pressure on the kings to hold onto the power that is falling through their fingers like sand. Victoria Ratliff was not meant to live an uncomfortable life. Shiv, while attempting to become king herself, uses Tom as a backup plan (and ultimately succeeds to become queen.) We even see Mook emerge as this role, urging Gaitok to lean into a more violent nature to get a promotion at work.
Daisy Buchanan was a pioneer for these characters. Gatsby briefly makes Daisy his queen, finally getting everything he’s ever wanted. But Tom Buchanan knows how to win her back, asserting that Gatsby’s new money was earned from unethical means. Daisy jumps ship in this moment, pushing the first domino that leads to Gatsby’s ultimate downfall. It’s often the actions of these queens that uplift the kings or determine their fate.
(The difference between old and new money doesn’t appear in modern stories as it does in stories from the 1920s, maybe because the wealth gap is so much wider and those with generational wealth are less accessible. I’m not an economist, I’m just a storyteller with a theory.)
The Quick Death
Timothy Ratliff’s story does not end in death in The White Lotus, and part of me hopes that this means the Ratliff’s story will continue in the fourth season. The king’s downfall is usually quick and painless, a cautionary tale of mortality and karma. Gordon’s wife leaves him. Logan Roy dies on an airplane. (God, that episode was amazing.) Jim gets shot by Rick. Gatsby is shot by George Wilson.
Death will come for everyone. It’s the story of The Great Gatsby and the story of The White Lotus, 100 years apart.
These are quintessential American stories because our country is in a state of denial right now. Many people believe that a king with a criminal past can “make America great again” and hold our position as the world’s biggest superpower. 53% of white women are telling their husbands they are not meant to live an uncomfortable life, sacrificing their own autonomy in the hopes they can hold their husband’s hand and hold onto wealth at the end of the story. America is not old money, though. Our empire has only been around for 250 years. Is this our season finale, our final chapter? We’ll just have to keep following the story to find out.
