Sitting in any particular English class, in High School, at the age at which you’re still learning to grow into who you are, you get asked questions, prompts. Over the course of a few years, ‘The Great Gatsby’ comes up more often than not. You read the book, analyze the film, and discuss within the confines of the classroom. The main discussion about ‘The Great Gatsby’ is the obvious failure of the American dream through the characters’ journeys and battles with wealth and love. The most popular prompt given states, “Is Gatsby truly great or just a desperate man chasing an unattainable, idealized past?”
Sitting in English class, you haven’t truly lived your life fully, haven’t had vital experiences, haven’t yearned like Gatsby. You don’t think about what you type on your computer, you write with no passion, you write just for the class. As we all look back at Gatsby now, we understand him a little more. Why Gatsby yearned for her for so long, why he became wealthy so they would be equal, why he bought a mansion across the lake from her, why he threw extravagant parties every weekend in hopes she would show.
“It’s so sad because it’s so hard to make her understand…I’ve gotten all these things for her…and now she just wants to run away.”
What we unpack now and see clearly is that Gatsby fell in love with her at a young age, yearning for her till he died. He was in love with the idea of her, not who she was becoming. She was young love, not reality; he glamorized her. Daisy was an item to him. Gatsby said, “It was only for her, the house, the parties, everything.” Gatsby’s dreams and desires got the better of hi,m and he got violent and raged when she couldn’t deny her love for her husband, Tom.
You can love the thought of someone forever; you can die loving the thought of someone, but you can’t go very far with just that. The green light across the water was a symbol of what he couldn’t reach, what he couldn’t have. He spent the whole novel trying to win her. He got Nick to help him set up a date, and he continued to throw the parties. He had such strong feelings for her, feelings he didn’t know how to control. When it truly feels right, the waiting won’t feel like forever. Instead, it will feel like seconds, even if you didn’t expect the outcome, it was about the journey, even if you knew the ending. Don’t aim for wealth, don’t aim to die full of wealth, we should aim to die rich in what gives us life.
“Is Gatsby truly great or just a desperate man chasing an unattainable, idealized past?” The answer…yes, he was a great man, but he was desperate too, and he didn’t get what he yearned for. Life absorbs us, the past absorbs us, and sometimes we forget life is coming from us, not at us. As Nick Carraway said, “J, you can’t repeat the past.”