Final Musings on The Great Gatsby

Final Thoughts on The Great Gatsby

            The Great Gatsby has slid into a sterling spot amongst the classic novels of the ages.  Forever it will be enshrined next to many of the other classics works.  I appreciate the novel because of the descriptive and elevated language that Fitzgerald used to sculpt his masterpiece.  The words rise up off the page and create an illustrative imagery assisting the reader into the fantastic world of Jay Gatsby.  The Great Gatsby exudes elegance, it presents a picture of the nineteen-twenties that a reader can see before him/her.

            That being said, the plot and storyline of The Great Gatsby is deceptive and unpleasant.  I think this is as far as I could ever delve into any sort of romance novel (sorry Twilight fans).   Although I am not in the place or circumstance of any of the main characters, I find myself reeling with frustration by their poor and petty decisions.  I do not presume that my decisions would warrant any different results from a modern audience; however, I should think I would not have pursued Daisy after the finality of her marriage. 

            Above all else, this novel serves as a warning.  It tells us to beware fixating feelings toward one idea or dream.  If we continue in pursuit of something, which is so harmful to us, it will prove our utter ruin.  Undoubtedly, the most depressing part of the novel is the lack of realization of Gatsby.  Often those who are most deviant and deranged in their thinking are completely oblivious to the fact.  What voice of reason can penetrate their loaded ears?  Whose heavy hand will rise to indicate the correct course?  In this novel there is none.  What Gatsby needed was a better friend.  That is easy to say with the facility of hindsight, but Nick Caraway should have expressed some sentiments concerning his obsession with Daisy.

            Recently, I heard a wonderful story, “about a girl that [Jeffrey R. Holland] had tried to reach and could not, that her mother had tried to reach and could not, that her bishop had tried to reach and could not, that her stake president had tried to reach and could not. Nobody could reach her—except her girlfriend, who took her by the collar, shook her, started to cry, and said, ‘Don't you see? Don't you see what you're doing to me? You break my heart!’ She sobbed. She just shook, and she shook her friend. That girl, when nobody (it appeared) on the face of this earth could touch her,... her mother could not reach her; her bishop could not reach her; but a friend reached her and literally grabbed her and shook her and said, ‘You're breaking my heart!’” [1] 

            What Gatsby needed was a friend who would shake him.  Although Caraway said, somewhat hesitantly, “you can’t repeat the past.”  He needed to get his attention, being bold about it.  Although, this also possibly could have not made one lick of difference, Nick Caraway could at least say to himself, I did all that I could.

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[1] (Holland, Jeffrey R. "Remembered and Nourishedby the Good Word of God." speeches.byu.edu. 2012.Web. <http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=867>.)

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). 

The Great Gatsby

Chapter 8

            Chapter eight is rent with sorrow and woe.  It is here that we finally learn of Gatsby’s foundational fondness, as well as Daisy’s superficiality. 

“[Gatsby] had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same stratum as herself—that he was fully able to take care of her.  As a matter of fact, he had no such facilities—he had no comfortable family standing behind him, and he was liable at the whim of an impersonal government to be blown anywhere about the world” (p. 149).

Gatsby’s progression as a character stops when he is unable to achieve what he seeks.  A present reality, with which we all must cope, is that there are dreams, ambitions, and aspirations that we shall never attain.  The voice of the realist, unflatteringly speaks, his cold breath seeps into our dreams and taints the very hope of that dream.  Then, like a dying tree, the dream slowly stops.  It ceases to be. 

“I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared.  If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.  He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass.  A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about…like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the anamorphous trees” (p161).

The dealings of this world upon our dreams prove that not all dreams come true.  That is reality.  That is life.  When life puts forth its sallow hand and pulls the vigor from our dreams, what we must do is carry on.  We must push back.  We must push forward.  Occasionally, however, our dreams transfer to realities.  Our life-like blueprint builds before our eyes.  We need rejoice in such moments, for fortune has smiled upon us.  The true tragedy is when our obsession becomes so encompassing, the quest for fantasy-turned realities becomes so engulfing, that we lose sight of any other present possibility.  If our lives are but broken things, dreams crashed on the rocks in the harbor, not even arriving to the ocean of actuality, then our progression halts.

Gatsby’s problems stem from the inability to move on.  Daisy gets married.  Gatsby should have stopped there.  But he doesn’t, he tries to push forward against an unalterable wall.  This wall is the past.  As stated in earlier entries, Gatsby believes that somehow, he is able to penetrate time and reach back into the recesses of yore.  What he should have done is discarded that dream for something new.  He is a talented person, he has a lot going for him; however, his monomania becomes his quick and unexpected downfall.  Gatsby slides into oblivion.  

The Great Gatsby

Chapters 7

            The plot thickens, and the drama heightens as the long-anticipated moment arrives; the confrontation of Daisy and Tom where Daisy will renounce all amours to this supposed and specious lover. Duration of weeks has lent themselves to the manipulation of Daisy, to sway her to believe her attraction and allurement to Tom Buchannan was merely a cozening, aptly performed by a dubious impostor.  So Gatsby has convinced her.  Long has Gatsby waited this majestic moment when he shall be prestigiously crowned the victor and Tom ignominiously decried and derailed for the sycophantic charlatan he undoubtedly is. 

Gatsby has coxed Daisy into a hallucinogenic state.  This brain-washing has proved profitable and has led to this building climactic moment.   The unassuming reader, faulting prior examination of the novel, undoubtedly settles with the notion that Daisy will assuredly announce her love for Gatsby and implore Tom to sign the bill of divorcement.  The remainder of the novel would be the definitive falling action.  No such fortune is found, for when Daisy goes to speak with Tom, she is unable to unclasp the sentiments of love which are painted upon her heart.  Gatsby then plunges in, attempting to force action.

“‘Your wife doesn’t love you,’ said Gatsby. ‘She’s never loved you.  She loves me.’ 

‘You must be crazy!’ exclaimed Tom automatically. 

Gatsby sprang to his feet, vivid with excitement. ‘She never loved you, do you hear?’ he cried.  ‘She only married you because I was poor ad she was tired of waiting for me.  It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved any one except me!’” (p. 130).

If only Gatsby could realize what reasoning he is using.  Doesn’t love, true love draw out requited love from both?  Shouldn’t Daisy accept Gatsby, prince or pauper, rich or poor?  The pettiness of money which pricks Daisy evidences her sheer shallowness.  How can we hope to see a happy-ending for such an unhappy couple? 

  Daisy subsequently reveals her love for Tom as well as Gatsby, which slaps and stings Gatsby.  It taxes him causing embitterment.  Still, he will not give up hope.  With hysteria silently smoldering this lame love-triangle, they take to their cars.  None of the participants of the prior conversation would prove stable to drive.  In an unfortunate event, Daisy, who selected to drive, hit Myrtle Wilson, her life, violently extinguished on that summer night.

The Great Gatsby

Chapter 6

“James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name.  he had change it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career—when he saw Dan Cody’s yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior….I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then.  His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all.  The truth was that jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.  He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.  So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end” (p. 98).

Here, in striking detail, is revealed the rub of Gatsby’s fantasies.  Here, we learn from whence he (in all enigmatic mystery) stems.  Not the haughty hot-house of pleasure, ease, and luxury; but rather a destitute hearth of agrarian mean.  With finality of the novel in mind, coupled with its searing impact on all who read it, we awaken to the idea that this tale is one of embittering dejection.  It is a story of the death of the American dream.  Gatsby, in the vibrant naiveté of youth, conceives an existence for himself which shall cut his woes from his coat-tails.  This conjuring, envisioned at 17, is magnanimous and noble.  Should we discourage Gatsby’s lofty ideals and expressions?  Is not every creature entitled to the rare expressionism as exhibited in the altitudinous fantasies of James Gatz? 

None can resist, amid the peering moonlight of sleepless reverie, the chance to steal away from the mundane and minutia of living to the chimerical fabrications of juvenile imagination.  The world we generate, although fantastic and unreal, if allowed, can become a monomaniacal obsession which drags us deep into fen and swamp whence hardly a man can escape its slimy grasp.  When a dream, silently and unnoticeably, corrupts into ill fixation, the spawn is hamartia.  We applaud Gatsby for the brilliancy of his hope.  Hope that consumes, however, becomes the hero’s error. 

Do not misunderstand.  Our dreams are laudable, as is Gatsby’s, but anticipation which wafts men and women into mania is insalubrious.  James Gatsby created: “A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor.  Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace.  For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing” (p. 99). 

This monomania is evidenced when, following the extravagant party held at his mansion, he tensely councils with Nick Caraway:

“‘She didn’t like it,’ he said immediately.

‘Of course she did.’

‘She didn’t like it,’ he insisted. ‘She didn’t have a good time.’

He was silent and I guessed at this unutterable depression.

            ‘I feel far away from her,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to make her understand.’

            ‘You mean about the dance?’

            ‘The dance?’ He dismissed all the dances he had given with a snap of his fingers. ‘Old sport, the dance is unimportant.’” (p. 109).

Nick Caraway then comments about Daisy:

 

            “‘I wouldn’t ask too much of her,’ I ventured. ‘You can’t repeat the past.’

            ‘Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!’

            He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.” (p. 110—emphasis added). 

            This pathetic, forced indoctrination, by Gatsby himself, is that the past can somehow be manipulated at your own discretion.  Such a thought is wholly illogical.  This absurdity will form the cast of his misfortune.

CHAPTER 5

The Great Gatsby: Chapters 5

            Chapter five features the culmination of our aspirations for the love rekindling.  Cupid stands figuratively astride Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchannan. 

            After returning from New York, Nick Caraway finds “the whole corner of the peninsula…blazing with light, which fell unreal on the shrubbery and made thin elongating glints upon the roadside wires.  Turning [the] corner, [he] saw that it was Gatsby’s house, lit from tower to cellar” (p. 81).  Although the mansion’ festivities are not underway upon this particular night, often it is described empty, “there wasn’t a sound.  Only wind in the trees, which blew the wires and made the lights go off and on again as if the house had winked into the darkness” (ibid.).  This vacuum house is void of its stellar shindigs on this particular night.  The daylight has fled, leaving the house longing for is usual concourses of people dotting the dining rooms, filling the furniture, and packing the passageways.  Gatsby affirms this when Nick inquires as to the house’s emptiness “I have been glancing into some of the rooms” (ibid). 

            As they converse, the truth is quickly revealed regarding why Gatsby has approached Nick on this night.  Gatsby desires that Nick host tea for Daisy and Gatsby just happens to arrive.  In Gatsby’s mind, this meeting will break the barriers of his desolate existence and, thereby, liberate him from the dismal depression in which he finds himself. 

            Naturally, we as the reader, find the bringing of flowers totally romantic.  Yet, the romanticism is marred by the nagging nervousness exhibited by Gatsby before Daisy’s arrival.  Gatsby sits in Nick’s home and two minutes to four he is ready to withdraw when finally she arrives. 

 

            My reasoning in recounting this part of the novel is to remind us the stakes here.  Gatsby has just invited the love of his life to tea at Nick’s home, and Gatsby is almost too apprehensive to see it come to fruition.  In fact, as Daisy enters the house, to our chagrin, Gatsby is not present at all!  After all the planning, the wanting, the desire to see this moment, Gatsby flees.  How often do we find ourselves in similar situations when at the slightest pang of panic we run out the door, unable to face what we have brought upon ourselves?

            Just when all seems lost, “there [is] a light dignified knocking at the front door.  I went out and opened it.  Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes” (pp. 85-86).  We then see this almost tragic moment transform into what I will call “a romantic love-punch for the audience,” simply because it becomes one of the most memorable scene in the book and ultimately sets the stage for further love interest between Gatsby and Daisy. 

            “For half a minute there wasn’t a sound.  Then from the living-room I heard a sort of choking mummer and part of a laugh, followed by Daisy’s voice on a clear artificial note: ‘I certainly am awfully glad to see you again.’  A pause; it endured horribly.  I had nothing to do in the hall, so I went into the room” (p.86). 

            As a reader, our emotions are roused by this pathetic reunion.  We feel sadness for Gatsby, realizing that this is, most likely, not the encounter he must have envisioned.  However, as they begin to converse, things quickly improve as both recognize their embarrassment.  It is with this jarring of our heartstrings that Fitzgerald masterfully intensifies the moment.  Through this distress, we are endeared to the characters. 

Daily we face moments of immense perplexity.  Daily we must wend our way amidst fear, anxiety, and uncertainty.  We relate to Gatsby in this moment.  How often do we see our plans lay wasted?  We feel that we should have fared better, when we fared worse.  We can empathize with Gatsby; we see the similarities of his situation and our current circumstances.  Therefore, when he flagrantly flees and reluctantly returns, it is us who is fleeing and returning.  We feel intimately apart of the proceedings.  If Gatsby is rejected, we are rejected.  As Gatsby feels embarrassed, likewise, we are embarrassed too.  Thus, when this premeditated meeting is somewhat successful, we feel overjoyed and there is an inseparable link created between the reader and Gatsby.  We are cheering and hoping for his success.

The Great Gatsby: Chapters 3 & 4.

                “There was music from my neighbor’s house thought the summer nights.  In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.  At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam” (p. 39). 

            This is but one of various accounts made by Nick Caraway concerning the fabulous and frantic orgies held at Gatsby’s mansion.  Although, seemingly annoyed by it all, it is apparent that Caraway knows much concerning the nature of these parties.  A truly irritated individual would seek to separate him/herself from the raucous riot occurring simultaneously next door.  We are certain of this tone of bother in Caraway’s voice by the comparison of the people to moths (an aggravating insect which can eat clothing).  Once again, Nick Caraway demonstrates his ambivalence.  At the same moment he holds contradictory attitudes—that of attraction and repulsion. 

            Caraway then informs us that he went to the party.  He involves himself because his fascination is more than his disinterest.  The invitation from Gatsby allows his imaginations to get the best of him.  Thus, while at the party, he walks among this castle of chattels enchanted by the extravagance and lured by the luxury of it all.  Then, he unintentionally meets Gatsby.  It is an absorbing scene:

                “I’m Gatsby,” he said suddenly.

                “What!” I exclaimed. “Oh, I beg your pardon.”

                “I thought you knew, old sport.  I’m afraid I’m not a very good host.”

                He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly.  It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.  It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor.  It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.  Precisely at that point it vanished— (p. 48).”

            This occurrence tips the balance in Gatsby’s favor.  Nick Caraway figuratively becomes a fan of Gatsby. Even so, Nick Caraway tries to “write off” this glamour of the gala later when finished writing about the party:

            “Reading over what I have written so far, I see I have given the impression that the events of three nights several weeks apart were all that absorbed me.  On the contrary, they were merely casual events in a crowded summer, and, until much later, they absorbed me infinitely less than my personal affairs” (p. 56).

Caraway is not about to admit that he enjoyed the party.

The interactions with Gatsby gives rise to the question of the rumors heretofore heard by Nick throughout the night.  We, the reader, are left wondering: “Is this hyperbole, do these rumors have foundation?”  The night continues in the suave soiree of fireworks and introductions.  However, as the night presses on, there is a moment of innate symbolism.  Nick Caraway comes to a large room full of people.  A girl in a yellow dress is playing the piano and a red-haired lady, standing nearby singing:

            “She had drunk a quantity of champagne, and during the course of her song she had decided, ineptly that everything was very, very sad—she was not only singing, she was weeping too.  Whenever there was a pause in the song she filled it with gasping, broken sobs, and then took up the lyric again in a quavering soprano.  The tears coursed down her cheeks—not freely, however, for when they came into contact with her heavily beaded eyelashes they assumed an inky color, and pursued the rest of their way in slow black rivulets.  A humorous suggestion was made that she sing the notes on her face, whereupon she threw up her hands, sand into a char and went off into a deep vinous sleep.  ‘She had a fight with a man who says he’s her husband,’ explained a girl at my elbow. 

                I looked around.  Most of the remaining women were not having fights with men said to be their husbands” (p. 51). 

                At this disgusting deluge of fighting between husbands and wives, we see the theme symbolically portrayed.  Amid the excess of the bash, a place where people should be enjoying themselves, there is quarreling and weeping of remorse.  There is emptiness.  Here is the rancorous reality that human beings will never be happy with this lifestyle. Is Fitzgerald’s message that the hedonism of the age is a problem which cannot satisfy the terms and conditions of men and women’s happiness?  That people aren’t truly happy with the “live for the moment” lifestyle, continually getting what they want?  Are we to know that the unabated receiving of our desire’s whimsical wants is not instantaneously given?  Further reading will reply.  We see this emptiness again, just pages later:

            “A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell” (p. 55).

            Will all this emptiness resolve itself?  Shall Fitzgerald reveal, at any point in the novel, the panacea for the woes and angst of the age? 

                “‘I’ll tell you God’s truth.’  His right hand suddenly ordered divine retribution to stand by.  “I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West—all dead now.  I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years.  It is a family tradition’” (p. 65). 

            In this chapter, for the first time we are intimately introduced to Gatsby, as is Nick Caraway. Gatsby’s attempted portrayal as a traditional wealthy family is a tragic exaggeration which likely stings his Gatsby’s lying lips as it leaves.  For those who are familiar with the story, we are deeply melancholic about this supposition accepted unwittingly by Nick Caraway.  The first portrait we have of Gatsby is gallant, refined, and sophisticated.  Furthermore, our narrator admits this in his reflections; the “Great” Gatsby, Gatsby the wonderfully mysterious. 

James Gatsby’s hamartia, his error, his misstep, his frailty, his flaw is his obsession, obsession with Daisy Buchannan.  Caraway wrongly sees it as “hope.”  However, this is not hope.  Gatsby’s is hope in excess, hope in the extreme.  This hope cankers into monomania, a preoccupation so preemptive, that everyone involved is affected.  It is his fatal flaw.  This flaw leads to his lying, his cheating, his foul-play to get, what he wrongly assumes, he deserves.