*A quick note in defense of some of the language in these chapters: this book was written and published well before WWII, so don't hate on Fitzgerald for using words like "holocaust" and "swastika" - they didn't carry the weight then that they do now (I only mention it because I read those and I was like "whoa man slow down that ain't cool" and then I remembered that actually it was cool in his time so yeah)
Congratulations, team, we did it. Far from being a sprint, AP Lit has been a marathon, but we have finally crossed the finish line of eight novels, countless poems, and prose passages which now all run together in our memory. To quote Ms. Meltesen, "ta-da."
As I finished this book, I found myself musing (get it? Like middle school English? Full circle y'all) upon the title - The GREAT Gatsby. What made him great? Was he really all that great?
It strikes me that he's more of a tragic character (with maybe some redeeming qualities) than a gallant hero (with perhaps a flaw or two). More of a Dimmesdale than a Darcy if you will. I mean this man pined after a woman he thought he could never have for like five. years. In that sense, he was a victim of the society which unfairly boxes people into social strata based on generational wealth. But when this same woman actually speaks her mind (which, it feels important to mention, didn't happen until the two men in the room talked OVER HER HEAD FOR LIKE A PAGE AND A HALF about HER FEELINGS) and tells him she's never going to choose him over her husband, he will not let it go. Poor Nick, who has somehow become for Gatsby what a freshman's Stanley cup means to her (i.e. emotional support), must watch as Gatsby pathetically insists that "Daisy'll call too" (Fitzgerald 154). He even leaves his line open all day for her to no avail.
But you have to admire his persistence. There's something tragic but sweet about his continued belief in his love for Daisy...until we find out that he only really fell for her because she represented everything he wanted in life: houses that "amazed," "shining motor-cars," basically a "rich, full life" (148). It makes Gatsby's "love" for Daisy feel almost narcissistic and entirely self-serving, and perhaps the fact that he never ended up with her is a metaphor for the status he never achieved (evidenced by the fact that he had no friends to come to his funeral).
I think what made Gatsby great was his ability to dream. Where no one saw anything but "a penniless young man without a past" (149), James Gatz saw the American dream at work. Perhaps his methods were questionable, but I can't fault him for his capacity to dream. It reminds me a lot of the titular character from The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, if any of you have read that one. She dreams of making it in Hollywood and makes lots of questionable choices in the process. But you always get the sense that she never lost belief in herself or in her dream, a necessary quality for anyone trying to do something new. Just a thought for y'all on a Monday.
Switching gears, I thought it was very interesting how George Wilson's last act on this earth was to kill Jay Gatsby. Now don't get me wrong - I neither expected Gatsby to survive the novel, nor did I expect Wilson to emerge from it anything less than a felon, but I am surprised that it was Gatsby, not Tom, who ended up with a bullet in his chest. After all, Tom was the one sleeping with Myrtle the whole time. I guess it does make sense when you take into consideration that Gatsby's car was the one that killed Myrtle, but it really seemed to me that what broke Wilson first was his wife's affair. In any case, the man was clearly off his rocker when he referred to our friend TJ Eckleberg's eyes as God's.
I think what I'm trying to say here is that I'm struggling with the greatness of Gatsby. He was a dreamer, but he lost out ultimately. He was ambitious, but he was a bad enough person that someone hated him enough to murder him. He created a life for a woman he loved, but he was too insecure and held back by society to see their relationship clearly at any stage. What do you guys think?
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