Something more powerful than the God made in the image of man

"...She became conscious that she was miserable and that the tears were rolling down her cheeks. She wondered if they were tears of self-pity, and tried resolutely not to cry, but this existence without hope, without happiness, oppressed her, and she kept shaking her head from side to side, her mouth drawn down tremulously in the corners, as though she were denying an assertion made by some one, somewhere. She did not know that this gesture of hers was years older than history, that, for a hundred generations of men, intolerable and persistent grief has offered that gesture, of denial, of protest, of bewilderment, to something more profound, more powerful than the God made in the image of man, and before which that God, did he exist, would be equally impotent. It is a truth set at the heart of tragedy that this force never explains, never answers — this force intangible as air, more definite than death."


— The Beautiful and the Damned, page 414


As I read, and still re-read, this passage describing Gloria Patch's disillusion with life (and I would argue the materialistic approach to fulfillment), I begin to think over the relative grief to our own consciousness that we all feel at points in time — this brokenness to adapt and feel sufficient and useful to the world in which we live. What is this force? What is this catch-22 to ever-learn, explore and enrich or accept the fates as acts of God?


Fitzgerald was aware of his egotism. Was his exchange of "God made in the image of man" an attempt at satire?