The Great Gatsby

Chapter 9—The Final Chapter

            This novel is a tragedy—pure and simple.  Two lovers are unable to enjoy perpetuity of their love due to paucity on the part of one.  Daisy is the culprit.  Her character wishes that we believe her to be the victim.  The victim, as far as this novel is concerned, is Nick Caraway.  It is he that must suffer through the alienating relationship.  He that must suffer the disgusting display of doting infatuation laid before a sappy snake who is unable to make up her mind.  Daisy’s tale would affect us were we to see an attempt on her part to preserve this relationship. 

            Nor can we label Gatsby as the victim.  It is his willful rejection of defeat that ultimately contributed to his colossal downfall.  Gatsby is unable to settle.  Were he able, he would have found someone else, who probably would have made him happier than Daisy.  But no, instead, he must invariably have what is not his.  He wants money, which he doesn’t have, so he delves into the devious business of bootlegging.  Upon completing this coveting quest, he finds himself wanting the wife of another man.  This is not love.  For this reason, he falls.  The “Great” Gatsby, ironically lies entombed in his pool, surrounded by his stuff, in his elephantine mansion, completely and bitterly alone.  We find no victim here, no mere butt of some cruel joke, but a deliberate self-destruction in desiring that which is not his.

            Chapter nine is characterized by dnouement—the final resolution of the conflicts and complications, sad as that description may be.  Nick Caraway meets Gatsby’s father, one who has not seen his son for an extended period of time. 

Nick Caraway wants us to sorrow in Gatsby’s death, as he is.  Caraway, therefore, pens the finality of the novel in poetic prose, “I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock.  He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.  He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.  Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.  It eluded us the, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….And one fine morning—  So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. (p. 180—emphasis added).