Confession time - I don't get "The Great Gatsby"

[AngryAmish]

I heard that a movie remake is coming out and I must confess that I don't get "The Great Gatsby". I read it. I wrote a paper on it. I think I even saw a movie version. I understand the basic plot...but there is a subtext in there that I don't understand.

Explain it. Is the subtext that you should not try to be who you are not?

[XemaSab]

1. You're not alone in this

I don't "get" it either.

[TZ]

2. Its more a commentary on the shallowness of American society

especially upper class American Society. Maybe you should read bios of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald as Gatsby is quasi-autobiographical.
I really enjoyed the book though its been awhile since I've read it.

[JitterbugPerfume]

3. I quit half way through it

[rug]

4. The north shore of 1920s Nassau County is as irrelevant today as 17th century London.

[struggle4progress]

5. "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 that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made"

[Arugula Latte]

9. Sounds exactly like the Bush family.

[struggle4progress]

12. On one particularly bad day during the Bush era, I simply posted that quote in GD

without further comment

IIRC, it went immediately to the Greatest Page

So, regarding your comment: yeah ...

[WCGreen]

16. To me that's timeless....

That's the whole point of the book.

I think it is a good read, not a great read, but it does encapsulate one of the inherent contradictions that runs through our supposedly egalitarian country and that no body wishes to address...

Today, now more than ever...

[skypilot]

6. Oh, thank God...

...I'm not the only one. I read it years ago. It left no impression on me at all. It's about rich people or something, right? Maybe a re-read now that I'm older will make a difference.

[LostInAnomie]

7. I really think that the reason so many books we have to read in high school...

... are forced upon us because lesson plans are so easily available for them. Not because the book is actually that good, or because the teacher has some kind of deep interest, but mostly because there's a well trodden path already laid out before them.

[Flying Dream Blues]

20. That's it! "...there's a well trodden path already laid out

before them." I like that theory much better than the idea that teachers I actually liked and respected actually thought The Great Gatsby was worth a damn. IMHO, it was boring, self-important and depressing.

Thank you for making sense of this. Add "For Whom the Bell Tolls" to the "well trodden path" list. :)

[LisaM]

8. I've read it multiple times, and helped others write papers on it

It has a lot of subtext, one of which is that while you are irrevocably tied to your past, you can't get it back, can't change the future that the past ordained for you.

"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 farther. ... And one fine morning ---- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past".

I think that's one of the most beautiful book endings ever written. Some of it has to do with class divisions, but in Fitzgerald's world, the things that were unattainable to him were also due to a sort of inability to fit in quite enough, to be part of the world around him.

There is also an underlying theme of East vs. West - (the Eggs, but also the whole incident of Gatsby's youth, and Dan Cody). Light is used very evocatively and thematically all through.

I gave it to a German friend to read once, though, and she didn't get it at all - handed it back and said that she wasn't interested in reading about a bootlegger! Talk about missing the boat.

I do worry that the movie will miss the mark entirely.

[Arugula Latte]

10. That ending line is very, very memorable.

In fact, that's the main thing I remember about the book as a whole.

Have you ever seen the Robert Redford/Mia Farrow movie version of Gatsby? That one missed the mark, too.

[LisaM]

18. Yes, I have seen it

among other things they got wrong (though some of it was okay) was that Daisy was supposed to have dark hair! Things like that annoy me unreasonably.

[jobycom]

11. If it were that simple, Fitzgerald would have just written an essay.

The subtext isn't summed up in a line or two. It is about the difficulty of recreating yourself or doing away with your past, and about identity itself, in that you can adopt the trappings of another person or another class of person, but not necessarily become that person or class. It is about the dangers of seeing someone or something through the wrong eyes--to me that's the point of the glasses sign--of seeing them only as you want instead of how they really are, so that you judge them as being more than they are, and put your trust in them as the person they pretend they are to you, when the person they really are betrays that trust.

It's also about not being able to exist in a microcosm and not being able to ignore the outside world, and this is constant throughout the story. Tom and Mable have their own little apartment that ignores the facts of their lives, and in the end that kills her. Daisy and Jay have created their own little world, but again the outside world punishes them for it. In the end, Jay has recreated his entire life to become part of Daisy's world, but it's the wrong Daisy he wants to be with, and a colder, more shallow world he joins than the one he thought he was joining, and the leader of that world, in the form of Tom, eventually destroys the world Jay thought he could live in. Jay and Mable are two alternates of the same character--they both want someone from a different world, and they both achieve it for a short time, and in the end it kills them both. For Mable, her fantasy world was a way out of her real world, for Jay, the real world was changed so that he could enter the fantasy world. It didn't matter--neither one belonged, and both were killed by the larger real world.

There's also the whole element of class, of the different values of Tom's class and how the differences were much deeper than just money and business ethics, even of law and ethics. Tom is the most unethical character in the book, even though Jay is the criminal, because his ruthlessness is much more basic than Jay's, and that ruthlessness is what allows Tom to move into the Eastern aristocracy, while Jay never can.

There's even a whole subtext of truth and lies, and the different ways they can hurt or help. Most characters, except maybe Nick, were hiding some lie, and yet the lies saved some and killed others. Jay agreed to lie to save Daisy, yet Tom killed him with a half-truth to hide the bigger lie of his affair with Mable. In the final discussion between Nick and his girlfriend, they both agree to let a lie stand as truth rather than upset things further by admitting what they knew as true.

The whole study of truth and lies, ethics, power, identity, one's past, and denial of reality are timeless, while the specific issues of East versus West, of American values and class, are anchored in the novel's time.

All that, and the breathtaking writing and the tight construction of the novel are why so many consider it the greatest novel in English.

[Crystal Clarity]

15. I've never read it, but may now.

Thanks for the great summary jobycom!

[Demoiselle]

23. Fine analyis, jobycom.

Great books can be depressing. True and depressing.

[joeybee12]

13. It's the GREATEST AMERICAN NOVEL...EVAH!!!!!!

EVAH!!!!!

[madinmaryland]

17. Would you care to expound on that comment, joey? I think folks here

would appreciate your deeper thoughts on this matter.

Or did you think you were posting to the Michael Vick life history post in the Sports Forum??

:D

[Blue_Tires]

14. subtext:

1. Harsh criticism of the flippant, carefree, and ultimately destructive ivory-tower attitudes and mores of the ultra-wealthy...Fitzgerald obviously had the pulse of the pre-crash 1920s, but theme made a revised comback in quite a few 80s books and movies.

2. Nouveau riche versus inherited wealth.

3. Small-town, working class values versus big-city, upper crust ones.

4. Obsession with a dream, and what lengths some people go to make it happen. (AND if you can make that dream a reality, is it ever as good as imagined?)

5. The it-doesn't-matter-where-you-get-it morality of making big money (and making obscene displays of it)

6. The age-old, "anyone with a little determination and smarts can become a millionaire overnight" American Dream theme

[pgodbold]

19. I always thought the subtext was beware the idle rich for they shall f**k you up. nt

[AngryOldDem]

21. To me it's a social commentary on the 1920s.

All built on glitz, glamour, and pretense, destined to meet a bad end.

Not interested, though, in a movie remake. The Redford/Farrow attempt was a travesty, with perhaps the exception of Sam Waterston as Nick.

[Mojambo]

22. I think it's about this guy who's great. n/t

[Tyrs WolfDaemon]

24. The whole truth about the deep hidden meaning:

Gatsby is a giant whale wearing a hat.