The Great Gatsby

For the sake of continuity, I will start this blog entry by asking what this book is about. At its most basic, The Great Gatsby is the story of the social climber James Gatz, who invents himself as Jay Gatsby, falls in love with a rich girl, and spends the rest of his short, tragic life trying to win her, despite the fact that she has married a wealthy man named Tom Buchanan. After quickly amassing the fortune he needs to care for Daisy, Gatsby almost succeeds in getting her back, at least until Tom investigates the actual sources of Gatsby's money, which Tom reveals on a trip to New York with Daisy, Gatsby, Nick, and another friend. This revelation makes Daisy doubt Gatsby, but it is a tragic accident on the way home from New York that ruins Gatsby's chances forever - and indeed ends his life. On the way home, Daisy drives, inadvertently striking and killing a woman who turns out to be Tom's mistress, Myrtle Wilson. Thinking Gatsby hit Myrtle and drove away, Tom tells Myrtle's husband where to find Gatsby. George Wilson goes to Gatsby's house, shoots him in his pool, and then shoots himself, leaving Nick Carraway alone to arrange Gatsby's funeral, which no one but Gatsby's father attends. It is a sad and wonderful story, but it's also a more complex one than I think I realized.

I think Jason is right on about the parallels between James Gatz and Clyde Griffiths (who seals his fate in part by inventing not one but two new identities for himself). There is a social climber at the heart of this novel, and the narrator says that he "represent[s] everything for which I have an unaffected scorn." At the same time, however, the narrator has genuine affection for Gatsby, who has "an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person. No - Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men."

But what did prey on Gatsby? That's a question I don't feel like I can entirely answer to my satisfaction.

The east-west business that Jason raised also interests me. The Carraways have new money, but they have stayed in the same place long enough that they can successfully mythologize their origins and masquerade as having old money. Near the end of the novel, Nick says, "I am . . . a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family's name." In the middle "west," old money is rooted. There are family homes, family estates, and the people have some decency. In the east, where there is new money, anyone can rent any house. No one "remembers" how to get to your address unless you're throwing a party. People don't come to your funeral. God himself isn't watching anymore; he's been replaced by an advertisement, a giant pair of eyes.

There is some connection, too, between geographical and social mobility, both of which are vaguely distasteful. Old money keeps horses. Old money converts a garage back into a stable, while new money buys a new yellow car, a "circus wagon." Jordan and Daisy are both bad drivers. I don't know what this all means, but I find it interesting!

I suppose Nick admires Gatsby's optimism because he knows Gatsby, like Clyde, can't possibly succeed. We can never have the American dream; it's ever receding before us, so that we can only ever be what we were at the start.