The Great Gatsby - 1925
The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West and East Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Roaring Twenties that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream.
The American Dream-did it ever exist or has it morphed into a Gatsby-like misinterpretation of happiness based on wealth and defined as success? Happiness is a self-defined concept that our Constitution gives us the freedom to pursue, but its definition is elusive.
ReplyDeleteThe Great Gatsby has been analyzed to bits by academics, psychologists, book clubs, and high school students since it found revival post WWII. Based in part on Fitzgerald’s own background and experiences, it has been voted the 20th century’s best American novel, with themes that reflect the excess and decadence of the Roaring 20’s, and the idealism that the American dream was open to all who worked for it despite birth station. The plot concludes that a vehicle of materialism will only end in disillusionment as it is as shallow and fleeting as a mist, thus unsustainable. The symbol of the green light on Daisy’s dock represents possibility, but Gatsby’s hope to win her and find perfection is based on an unfulfilled past illusion. He chases by mistaken means an end which had already shifted and moved on.
The most depressing element is that nothing is solid-all characters are shallow and misguided and deceitful to others and to themselves. The only reality is in the finality of death. Even Nick, the closest one to rationality, is judgmental, impressionable, and confused. There is no sympathy for any of the characters.
Gatsby suffers from over exposure through required reading, and at least 5 movie adaptations from a 1926 silent to 2013 DeCaprio. As such, I was pleasantly surprised by rereading the prose itself, which conveyed so much in a brilliant economy of words.
In searching for connection to our previous Poster readings, I could force a similar literary theme of conflict within the soup of human nature. I do wonder how the degradation of women in this novel has stood the test of time without outrage. My ah ha moment was in the end when Nick regards the isle at night as it must have looked to the first sailors to the New World looking for a better life, when they came “face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate with their capacity for wonder,” a reflection of unknown possibility. As we seek answers about our frontier Universe, can we hold hope in balance with practicality, a combo that eluded Gatsby and led to his lonely ending? We are not one of the world’s happiest countries by whatever means sociologists measure. If happiness means satisfaction, then chasing more money and the material objects it can buy won’t ever reach the goal. As pointed out in Siddhartha, this is an unfortunate downside of capitalism.
Interesting point about the portrayal of women in the book. The 20's was a decade of American female empowerment with the suffrage movement being the most obvious example. Not an easy thing to get an amendment to the Constitution! While the characters such as Daisy might seem meek and led around by Tom and Gatsby, the choices largely reside with the female characters in this book. Jordan is an example of a strong woman character though it might be misinterpreted as she drifts through life accepting the graces of others based on her athletic prowess. That she can live as an female athlete, however, is a sign of independence from the traditional system.
DeleteThis is a very hard read to pin down. One can see why it is considered the greatest American novel of the 20th century in many instances but while reading it, it doesn’t feel like you are experiencing something of that scale. I was never blown away nor had a hard time walking away from it down for a while, qualities I have experienced with books I do love. I do, however, have a very hard time finding fault in it. It is constructed and put together in an airtight fashion. And to think it wasn’t even the final edit Fitzgerald wanted! The version I read was considered the authoritative edit made with notes and blessing of the Fitzgerald estate but that is taken with a grain of salt since it was not the author himself that authorized it. Perhaps the building up of expectations, the acclaim, and the required admiration for the book are to blame for the lack of reception when it is forced upon unwilling audiences in school. It is an entirely different reading experience when reading it of one’s own free will and I happy for it as it allowed for more understanding and absorption of the material.
ReplyDeleteIt is a story of a changing American Dream as opposed to the death of one perhaps. The end of old times and the beginning of the what was to come. The headiness of America after WWI, tired but flush with success, the last country standing in many ways, propelled the country into brave new waters. The decimation of Europe left many voids, material, economic, etc. and now Americans of any class could fill those voids. People could make their dreams real as Gatsby seems to do throughout the book with dizzying ease. It was my thought that the American Dream, the ability to make oneself into anything given hard work and perseverance, to pursue happiness under the protection of liberty is what how that dream was defined. The desire for money and the quick fix over the hard work is certainly a perversion of the traditional Dream.
Fitzgerald himself believed that the American Dream should be pursuit of happiness and individuality, and it seems that characters in the book were chasing just that through the lens of money. Wealth had freed them, allowed access to the table originally cordoned off by old society and Victorian expectations. Only the 1930’s (and reality) showed the new lifestyle for what it was, temporary and fleeting. The novel, while chronologically condensed into a short amount of time, speaks for the decade as a whole if Gatsby’s death is the death of that Dream. Whatever version of the Dream is portrayed in the novel, it is probably closer to the one most modern Americans envision today: Money, greed, fulfillment and immediate satisfaction. Making America great again? That is the missing component both today and in Fitzgerald’s time. The individuals pursing it defined themselves, sought happiness, but also came with a reinvestment of the discovered self into American society for the good of the whole country. The cycle of history strikes again.
ReplyDeleteIt is a portrayal of the decadence and lowered morals attributed to the times and a criticism of it. Fitzgerald certainly wasn’t hurting for access to the high life. THEY do say to write what you know. Given what Americans had just seen in Europe where the old systems failed and wiped out generations in the process, it is easy to see why alternate lifestyles were explored and many lived for the moment. A fatalist movement in the wake of the fatality of the Victorian age. I guess with the rise of organized crime due to Prohibition and blue bloods having to rub elbows with moon shiners that made a fortune but without the social boundaries or societal understanding, traditionally guarded by high society, people just didn’t know how to interact with each other. It was the Wild West where anything went. Kind of like Afghanistan were the new power wealth rushes in to fill the void left behind by the old. Not a total void as elements of the old persist and are even yearned for and as such, conflict is the result.
I wonder at Fitzgerald’s choice of symbols for the sociology of wealth. If Gatsby represents the new money, who is the old? The Sloanes of course but is Tom and Daisy? I guess. Tom seems to display many of the same, if not worse characteristics than the newly liberated folks at Gatsby’s parties. But the description of the physical homes I suppose is the clue as to which type of money is being described. The allure for the freedom of the new Dream infects the old money as seen by Tom’s affair. If that Roaring 20’s lifestyle is the dominant one, best go native to survive. Like the aristocracy of Europe or the samurai in Japan, the old money had to adapt and figure out their place in a world that no longer behaved like them. That is the way it goes. The old has to lower themselves and play nice with the new while the new apes the old in an attempt for validation. America, in an attempt to prove it was a world power on par with those in smoldering Europe, spent spent, spent to capture their dream of a spot at the table. Gatsby dreamed of Daisy a symbol of perfection, all he was denied, and a means to an end for happiness. When those dreams were proven speculative and shallow, both America and Gatsby “died.”
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that nothing seemed solid. The times were movie fast and fortunes were made and lost overnight. Countries disappearing like Russia or the Ottoman Empire. Industrialization, the car, airplanes; people had to keep up. Dreams, of happiness or money are fleeting. With life moving so quickly, I am not sure there was time for anyone to ground themselves, to have depth. Sink or swim. Given that all of this takes place over a summer, it also doesn’t allow much character development to prove any one particularly solid. I am sure after the war to end all wars and the volume of change, the future was both terrifying as an unknown and enthralling for possibility.
ReplyDeleteI like your connections to the other books in the poster. First reflections found me looking for lines linking this one to the others. It is one that I might have to post as follow-up when the epiphany hits. I can only liken it to Sophie as the schools of thought and purpose taught by the philosophers changed over time as the world did. Changing times, changing values.