The Great Gatsread (3/3)

(3/3), as you can tell, tells you that this is my last post for this book, which means all spoilers are free from this point (cough Alycia). There are major spoilers underneath, so if you hadn't read the book, please don't proceed. I would hope you find out yourself by reading the book...but it's a free country. Do whatever you please.

Jay Gatsby, like I said in the last post, is stuck in the past when he was with his ex-girlfriend Daisy, now married to a man named Tom. Gatsby's neighbor, the narrator, tries to help him. He narrates, "He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: 'I never loved you'...after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house - just as if it was five years go...I venture, 'You can't repeat the past.' 'Can't repeat the past?' he cried incredulously. 'Why of course you can!' He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. 'I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before,' he said" (Fitzgerald 110). In the climax of the book, Tom and Gatsby end up getting into an argument in a hotel next to Daisy and the narrator. Gatsby demands that Daisy tell Tom that she never loved him. When Daisy reluctantly admits it, Tom starts to remind her of the memories they've had together, which causes her to take back what she said. Later in the night Gatsby drops Daisy off at home, but he hides in the bushes, thinking Tom might attack her. The narrator goes into the house and finds the couple reconciled. He tries informing Gatsby, but he doesn't believe it and continues to hide until the lights are turned off. Gatsby had tried numerous times to get Daisy off of Tom to return things to how it used to be, but it obviously doesn't work. However he still tries again and again.

Here's another famous character from a classic novel.

One name kept popping up inside my head: Holden Caulfield. Teenager Holden from the book Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is well-known in literature for not being able to escape from the past. For the entire book except the very last section, he desperately wants to go back to the past and become innocent again. When he was little, he went to the Nation Museum of History extremely often, and he loved it because it never changed. He loved the fact that it stayed frozen in time, and he himself wanted to be frozen in time and never grow up. He was delusional in the way that he actually thought it was possible, or kept on telling himself it was possible. When he visits his younger sister's elementary school, he sees a derogatory word written on the wall. He's determined an evil adult wrote it, trying to ruin children's innocence, but readers can infer that it was probably an elementary student that wrote the word. He also wants to catch children in a rye field from falling off of a cliff, implying that he thinks that he can save children's innocence. He keeps telling himself and his sister over and over that he can do it, and that's the only thing he cares about.

The two of them are similar in the way that they're delusional and stubborn of the past. In their minds, their pasts seem so beautiful now that psychologically I think their past is overly signified. Gatsby talks about Daisy and their past relationship as if they were as beautiful as flowers, but to be honest Gatsby cared a lot about her looks and money than he did her personality and identity. Holden remembers the time in his past when he was extremely close to a lovely girl. There are events in the book that imply that the girl isn't the pure darling that Holden remembers, but he still believes that she hasn't changed at all. The only difference is that Holden accepted it more than Gatsby did at the end of the book. Holden got tuberculosis but Gatsby got shot...maybe acceptance is good for your health?

**SPOLIER-FREE FROM HERE. IF YOU'RE WONDERING WHETHER OR NOT TO READ THIS BOOK, THEN READ THIS PART.**

I wasn't extremely interested in the book and the plot in the beginning. I was counting the whole time, "18 pages...I'm 1/10 there...19 pages...Wait I thought I just read ten pages...ughh". But the climax made up for it, I think. The climax was what everyone was waiting for: confrontation. I wouldn't specify what confrontation, but confrontations are always the parts that make you most nervous. Fitzgerald does a nice job in putting together the dialogue and actions of the characters that make it seem very dramatic like a scene in a TV show. Afterwards it goes downhill but you think, "Wow, it was worth reading those 100-some pages so that I really understood that part of the book." I don't think it was terrible in other parts, so I think my fright for classics has slightly decreased. Thanks Gatsby!

Oh yeah, if you ever get headaches from reading or from school or from a lack of chocolate, you can try to relieve it by sort of massaging yourself. Enjoy the current Spring that's probably going to turn either back to freezing or to melting hot! :)