The Dark Side of Living the Good Life, Through Quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The GreatGatsby is a boozy blur of a book, but it’s not lacking in darker themes. Fromthe stilted and suffocating nature of class relations, to the pain of lostlove, the novel traces a picture of modernity and insists that life can behard, even for a millionaire playboy who throws fabulous parties. (Wait, thatdoesn’t seem right… but try to stay with us.) The roaring twenties, asFitzgerald presents them, are just as ugly as they are glamorous, just asstifling as they are loose.             It’s nosecret that the narrator of The Great Gatsby ,Nick, feels ambivalent about his place in the upper class. Although he lives inthe less-fashionable West Egg, he’s still up there in terms of the socialladder. In one of the more important passages in the book, he quotes hisfather: “‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘justremember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages you’vehad’. It’s obvious that this one statement has meant a lot to Nick – after all,he’s been “turning it over in [his] mind ever since” – but it doesn’t mean hetakes it at face value. A little later, Nick refers back to the conversation:“I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my fathersnobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamentaldecencies is parceled out unequally at birth.” Nick can’t shake himself of hisideas about his own status, but at least he recognizes his own “snobbishness.”   We couldtalk about society all day long, but if you’re going to choose one The Great Gatsby quote ,it will probably have something to do with the green light at the end ofDaisy’s dock. Gatsby moved into thehouse that he did so that he could see this bit of Daisy, his long-lost love,across the water every night. As soon as she finally ends up at his house, Nickobserves that “it wasagain a green light on a dock.” Daisy’s actual presence means that “ h is count of enchanted objectshad diminished by one.” Nevertheless, the green light is what shapes the courseof Gatsby’s life, despite the fact that he has no hope of being with Daisyagain. Nick’s final observation about him is that “Gatsby believed in the greenlight, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.”   Thatbrings us to the quote that ties it all together, The Great Gatsby ’s very lastline.   “So we beat on,” Nick intones,“boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”   And no, he doesn’t just mean that prohibitionwill soon be overturned, and things back to the way they should be. What Nickreally seems to be talking about is the inescapability of our pasts. Furthermore,it seems that fighting against the current doesn’t do much good. Does thisfinal quote express a kind of despair, the hopelessness of ever being able tomove on? Or does it suggest that if only we stop rowing and simply drift, we’llfind the peace and fulfillment we are all looking for? Your answer might changedepending on your mood, and that kind of complexity is what a great bookoffers.

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