the great gatsby

The Great Gatsby has been on my to-read list for quite some time. One of the strange things about going to church in a movie theatre is walking by movie posters on your way in and out. Every Sunday for the last few weeks, I've been walking by a giant four-sided cardboard advertisement for the movie The Great Gatsby. I knew I had to read the novel before seeing the film version, so when Cole's had a convenient display dedicated to the book I picked up a copy. 

A willing victim of marketing. 

I really enjoyed The Great Gatsby. Even though it was published in 1925, Fitzgerald's writing is fresh and powerful. It was interesting to read from a historical perspective -- the main character talks about "going into bonds" because "everyone he knows is going into bonds," just a few years shy of the stock market crash. I had also learned in history classes how World War I had rocked Western culture. The shining promises of progress were replaced with doubts, disillusion and distrust. This shift can be felt in The Great Gatsby. 

I did not expect this book, set in "the roaring twenties," to be sad. But it was one of the saddest books I have ever read. Underneath the clothes, the cars, the glitz, the lights . . . there is a persistent emptiness in the world Fitzgerald creates. Characters are surrounded by people, yet lonely. Lives end abruptly, meaninglessly, and funerals are sparsely attended. Marriages are empty and love is fleeting. Things are broken. Identities are false, the past has been carefully crafted. All of the wealth that is showcased in the novel is ... hollow. 

The book is haunting, yet I believe it is so relevant today. My philosophy professor at Redeemer liked to call modern culture a culture of "cheerful nihilism." Everything is meaningless, it's all about having fun and chasing temporary pleasures along the way. It's about the Facebook photos, the appearances, the practiced smiles. But there are so many people -- especially young people -- who feel rootless, who are grasping after significance. The Great Gatsby reminds me again of the raw need for God, the hunger for hope and meaning. 

Some of my favourite quotes from The Great Gatsby: 

"'Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'" (1) 

[Daisy, about her newborn daughter] "I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool --- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." (22) 

"...the silver pepper of the stars." (25) 

"... the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment-houses." (31) 

[Nick, the narrator]: "Everyone 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." (59) 

"... the clock ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor." (95) 

[Nick sitting beside Jordan in the car, contemplating his 30th birthday and the passing of time]: "So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight." (129) 

"... a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lustreless moon." (167) 

"Her hand ... sparkles cold with jewels." (167) 

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was the kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made..." (170) 

And the last words of the novel ... 

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter -- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further .... And on fine morning ---
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." (172)