Love doomed to lose – the disi
[Abstract] The Great Gatsby, first published in 1925, is the last masterpiece of Francis Fitzgerald, who is one of the most influential writers of the ‘Lost Generation’. It is mainly about the tragic love story of Jay Gatsby, the hero of the novel, and Daisy Buchanan, which could be a well illusion of the boredom and inanity engendered by American Dream.
The Great Gatsby (1925) is Fitzgerald’s best piece of work, and it is even listed as the second best English language novel, only behind James Joyce’s Ulysses. Fitzgerald, a member of the ‘lost generation’ of the 1920s, was widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. As for this novel, it mainly portrays the tragic love story of Gatsby and Daisy. They fell in love when Gatsby was a penniless second lieutenant. After Gatsby being sent to Europe while WWI, Daisy gave up waiting and married Tom Buchanan. When he returned from Europe, Gatsby decided to win daisy back by showing off his wealth. And his unique deeds aroused the narrator’s interest, which got he involved in this series. But Daisy was never the same nice girl she used to be. One day Daisy’s thoughtless in driving lead to an accident and the death of Tom’s mistress. Tom instigated the dead’s husband to kill Gatsby and fled away with Daisy. After being abandoned by Daisy, Gatsby was shot dead and none of those so called friends came to his funeral.
It may be obvious for many that the whole story is about American Dream, especially the disillusion of it. Jay Gatsby, the hero, may be a typical figure who successfully achieved his American Dream, for his possessing great fortune which he earned through his own efforts. He possessed great mansion with a private “marble swimming pool” and “more than forty acres of lawn and garden”. And squandered his money to hold luxurious parties regularly.
There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars…. On weekends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city, between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains…. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruited in New York – every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door a pyramid of pulp-less halves….
Nevertheless, capable in making money, he was quite single-minded to love. As we could see from the novel, though Gatsby already figured out that Daisy had changed,
“She’s got an indiscreet voice,” I remarked. “It’s full of -”
I hesitated.
“Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly.
and he could feel that he was far away from her and “it’s hard to make her understand” he could not give up his illusion that Daisy would be changed back into what she used to be and everything would be the same as long as he tried hard enough and he could be able to fix everything just the way it was. And he also tell the narrator a lot about their treacle pass. But it was his faith in Daisy that leaded to his tragedy. Since he lost sight of the change in his lover, he could not help but taking the blame of her knocking into her husband’s mistress. It may be himself who should take the blame for his death.
And he was also incapable of making friends. Though numerous people went to his parties, seldom of those guests was his friends. In fact as Daisy mentioned, many of them went without invitations and just broken into the party with Gatsby’s not wanting to reject.
‘Lots of people come who haven’t been invited,’ she (Daisy) said suddenly.
‘That girl hadn’t been invited. They simply force their way in and he’s too polite to object. ’
And those guests, when enjoying Gatsby’s hospitality, treated Gatsby with hostility, supposing he amassed his wealth by smuggling and killing. Some were out of ignorance as they knew nothing of the host, while others were out of malice and jealousy as they envied the host’s wealth and fame. That ,as well as the rumors that it was Gatsby who should be blamed for the traffic accident, accounted for the desolate funeral of Gatsby, only the narrator, Henry Getz , Gatsby’s father , and a Lutheran minister attended.
In a word, Gatsby could well represent the victims of materialism. Because of materialism Gatsby accumulated great fortune but lost either his love or his life. His tragedy were mainly caused by his pursuit of love. Just as his father mentioned, he was of great brain power and could have been a great man but he was killed and all possibilities vanished.
While Nick, the narrator, was quite opposite to Gatsby though they shared a similar background. Both born in bourgeoisie and veteran of World War I, got educated in universities, they stepped on different routes in the end. At first, he went to the east with the same American Dream as Gatsby though failed in his tries to make a fortune. Considering his imprudent choice in occupation, not so appropriate to his rational figure, simply based on the fact that “everybody I knew was in bond business so I supposed it could support one more single man”, his failure in it was not hard to comprehend. But he was rational towards love and did not sink into the vortex of love with Jordan as Gatsby did with Daisy. After he found out that Jordan was used to lying, he did not allowed himself to sink into the imagination of she would become honest, though he bore it in mind that “dishonesty in woman is a thing you never blame deeply – I was casually sorry, and then I forgot.” He knew it clearly that she “instinctively avoided clever shrewd men” and “that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dish.” With a faith that “every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known”, he bade a final farewell and left Jordan, who just engaged with someone else.
So to some extent we can draw a conclusion that Nick represented another kind of disillusion of American Dream, gaining nothing and returned to his hometown after a short period of struggling. Through his struggles in New York, he might have learnt more about the human nature through the tragedy of Gatsby as well. And that accounted for what he said in the beginning, “When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and a sort of moral attention forever.”
The American Dream is doom to evaporate, for its materialism-based destiny and its lack of bonhomie and kindred spirits. Everybody involved in it became task-oriented and getting less concerned about humanity, losing interest in keeping harmonious circumstances with others. Everybody concerned how much they could earn and how well they might be paid. As we could see from the last chapter, before the funeral Nick went to invite Meyer Wolfshiem, a closest friend of Gatsby, to attend it, but he refused to do so, as he “never like to get mixed up in it anyway”. For him friends passed away were not a friend anymore, and maybe a friend could not bring him interest were not a friend anymore. This attitude can also be seen from My Uncle Jules by Guy de Maupassant. When Jules “had visibly diminished the inheritance on which my father had counted, after he had swallowed his own to the last penny” and “shipped off to America on a freighter going from Havre to New York”, he was despised by all of the narrator’s family. But when he made a fortune and wrote back saying that “he was making a little money and that he soon hoped to be able to indemnify my father for the harm he had done him”, he became “a good man, a kind-hearted fellow, true and honest”. However when they found out that Jules was selling oysters on a ship with slight wages which could not cover his spending, he became a “thief” and “never would do anything” and may “drop down on us again”. All the changes were simply due to the amount of wealth Jules possessed.
The American Dream is just a plane where one could accumulate fame and fortune simply by working hard. It could provide opportunities but could never provide leisurely time with family and friends. As what we see from the novel, the heroes possessed so much, mansions, beautiful gardens and lawns, limousines and so on, but they still lived miserable lives. Their tragedies were doomed in the beginning when they chose to get involved in it. Lost in hedonism, these prodigals could not taste from the goblet of life, but to carouse again and again. It somehow resembles the green light at the buck near Daisy’s house. Green usually symbolize vigor and happy in most parts of the world. However here it is a seemingly positive symbol; beneath its vigorous appearance it is actual dull and harsh.
As Morrie Schwartz, a sociology professor at Brandeis University, once said, “We put our values in the wrong things. And it leads to very disillusioned lives.” The heroes in this novel aimed at a wrong target, materialism as we often conclude, which leaded to their tragic epilogue. He may be right when explaining that phenomena, even though his explanation was targeted at the 1990s,
These were people so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes. They were embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it never works. You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship.
It could well reflect the fact that this issue has not been settled even after eighty or so years, and it may continue to simmer now.
At the same time the world it created in this novel quite resembles the present China. For example, Nick left the west to look for opportunities in the east. And he mentioned that “the fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come east. You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumors and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored into marriage.” The avoiding of rumors and the opportunities the east could provide bears a resemblance to the mega cities namely Beijing, shanghai, Guangzhou while the west to the little towns and rural areas. And the extreme pursuit of property and wealth has left some impacts on us. The degradation of vegetation, the desertification of land and dramatic smog are only part of the environmental problems. And the lack of celebrity do exert a negative impact over their commercial performance. It seems that we also get “a form of brainwashing going on”, repeating something over and over, that
Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. More is good. We repeat it-and have it repeated to us over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise.
Under this brainwash we gradually lost ourselves, stopping dreaming but starting to work unconsciously. Facing his monitor and typing all day, one seldom thinks about why he should do such things. It could promote the economy of a country to some degree doubtlessly as everyone has been turned into industrious bees to produce and reproduce. However it may lead to social problems as well, such as corruptions and physician - patient disputes. Being task-oriented, we lose sight of how brilliant humanity is and how marvelous the time spent with their friends and relatives would be.
It seems that many social problems we are facing now could be a result of the widespread concepts of materialism. And unless we settled them well we cannot enjoy a life no matter how wealthy or powerful we are. It is who we are, who is with us that matters. There are numerous college students with a master’s degree today, but there are not many masters. One of the reasons may be the lack of ability to love not only his companies but also the entire human beings.
So this novel could act as alarm to us, that if we cannot deal with these issues in it, we might suffer from these tragedies as well. Though we are already facing some of them.
And from another side, we might have already noticed that Tom loved to talk about science. His science, however, was all about racial superiority.
“Have you read ‘The Rise of the Coloured Empires’ by this man God-dard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be – will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
Lack of real scientific thought, even though he was keen enough to remind the narrator not to believe everything he heard, Tom mistook the rumors for truths and yet helped separating the wrong ideas. Knowledge may be one of the possible reasons, but the racism deep in his heart could be the real source. His prejudices even affected Daisy. When she gave birth to her daughter, she wept and said she was glad and hoped her daughter could be a beautiful little fool – what she considered as the best condition a girl might be in. Even not a feminist I felt terrible for her sayings. And gender discrimination could be seen somewhere else such as how Nick reacted to Jordan’s dishonesty, “dishonesty in woman is a thing you never blame deeply – I was casually sorry, and then I forgot.” There should not be difference between each gender when facing the issues of dishonesty or some other moral issues. This freedom from charge was actually a sign that they would underestimate the other sex as only little children’s little dishonesty need not be taken seriously.
In fact, to write this report I read the novel again and again, and every time I read it I have a better understanding of it, although it does not change the fact that I do not like the story. It was not until the third time I read it did I finally understand the prologue, understand what was the knowledge point of background and the hope of everyone in uniform and at a sort of moral attention. What did the writer want to express at the prologue was his loathe to the materialism world. Nick’s father taught him to “remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had” whenever he felt to criticize anyone. And a description to others who might be in disadvantage at present is one of the typical feathers we could see from the novel. Even the secretary of Mr. Wolfshiem looked down upon Nick and obstructed his meeting Mr. Wolfshiem until he mentioned Gatsby. It seems as if everyone was too bush to think about what caused the issue and everyone was scorning and criticizing without mercy, without analyzing why someone would have chosen to do such things. To some degree the ending, which is of O Henry’s style – surprising while comprehensible – appeals to me. It was a consequence of several coincidence. If Gatsby had not allowed Tom to drive his car, if Tom had not showed off it to his mistress, if she had not rush out to meet Tom, if it was not Daisy driving…. All these lead to the tragic ending, leaving readers wondering what if one of those had not happened before.
As for the characterization, each character has his or her own merits and demerits, which gave them lives. Among them I like the narrator Nick best. Though he was not perfect and was somehow lost in materialism for a period, his honesty, his loyalty and his integrity made him a most lovable figure in it. And I have a mixed feeling towards Gatsby, for his talent and infatuation. To some degree I have a similar attitude to Gatsby as the narrator had, that
If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the ‘creative temperament’ – it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. 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.
Sometimes I consider this extraordinary gift for hope similar to Ah Q, though the latter is too optimistic to notice he is at a disadvantage. And they all died because of their being optimistic about others.
The novel ended. The life is still going on. As Lu Xun once said, tragedy is to have something valuable broken for others. In this case, the glory of humanity was broken by the materialistic world. But tragedy does not destroy something only, it also does to remind reader to protect what is precious around him or her. And that maybe what Fitzgerald wanted to express – to stay away from the material world and treasure humanity.
Reference,
Mitch Album. Tuesdays with Morrie. Doubleday. Page 82.
Guy de Maupassant. My Uncle Jules. August 7, 1883. Le Gaulois.
鲁迅，《再论雷峰塔的倒掉》，1925年2月23日，《语丝》周刊第15期
"100 Best Novels". Modern Library. Retrieved 14 May 2014. http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/
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