Reflections - The Great Gatsby

One critic said that all modern American literature traces itself back to The Great Gatsby. I don't happen to think that's true, but it only took me two lines of my own epic novel [coming eventually] before I made a direct reference to it.

There are many reasons for the success and continued popularity of The Great Gatsby. First, it's a story set in a magical age. It's glamorous, jazzy, colorful, affluent, dangerous, and always was far enough in the past so that no one could say with complete certainty that things were never like that. 

Secondly, it is a love story. The consuming love of Gatsby for Daisy; the love that left him dissatisfied with all his power and wealth. His, too, was a love for the past: his illusions of those hot nights, waiting to see her in a lazy southern town where she was the main attraction. It was an age of lost manners; just as the 20s were lost to readers of the book, the World War I period was lost to Gatsby. The Old South was lost to Daisy, but she had to behave as though it was still there and mattered.

Thirdly, it is a tragedy. Gatsby and Daisy's love belongs to that previous age. It has no part in her married life. As Nick says, 'they were careless people' and carelessness plays an important part. Remember what Nick says to Jordan about her driving, and she says, "It takes two to make an accident."

At once, this is a careless, irresponsible attitude - indeed, Nick and Jordan's love affair is born of boredom and indolence - and an important foreshadowing of the 'accident' when Daisy smashes into Myrtle Wilson.

Finally, the story is a mystery. Gatsby is an enigma - the handsome, gallant soldier, the hero, the man with the uncertain past. Even his past with Daisy is uncertain. Our fascination with him is the same as that of the people who come to his parties. "Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once." He is suspected of being a German spy, a cousin of the Kaiser, and even his claim that he was at Oxford was suspect.

From the start, Gatsby's story never adds up. "'What part of the Middle West [did he come from]?" I [Nick] asked casually.

"'San Francisco.'" 

As one of the guests remarks, "There's something funny about a fellow that'll do a thing like that. . ." [buy a new dress for someone whose dress was spoiled at a party] "He doesn't want any trouble with anybody." 

As with many great love stories, one of the partners isn't really the equal of the other. In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is far less constant than Juliet. He's fickle (at the beginning of the play he's pining for Juliet's cousin, Rosalind) and at Mercutio's death, he snivels, when audiences of the age would have expected him to take action. Macbeth isn't at match for Lady Macbeth, and it's hard to imagine Ophelia holding Hamlet's interest for long.

So it is with Daisy. She seems never to have grown up. She is Tom's doll, after being the southern coquette to all her beaux and soldiers. She says fabulously fatuous and stupid things: "There's a bird on the lawn I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He's singing away - "

This drivel is right after she's called Nick "an absolute rose!" 

Under stress, or just congenitally dim? The latter has my vote. Southern women were never noted for their intellect. Indeed, few were ever educated to the extent that their Northern (especially New England) counterparts were. It's no wonder Tom craves the company of some one more alive, if more coarse and uneducated. After all, anyone who can burst into tears at the sight of 'so many beautiful shirts' has got to be a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

Still, there is an argument for saying that she has been suppressing her true feelings since the trauma of marrying Tom, and only when she runs down Myrtle does she, briefly, reassert herself, only to become, inadvertently, the cause of Gatsby's death.

On the day that forever seals their destinies, Daisy has left New York after a fight with Tom. They're driving in Tom's car, and it finally emerges that Daisy is at the wheel. So, there she is with her old, true love, having had the row with her husband, and all of a sudden, that husband's mistress appears, waving to the car in the middle of the road. Daisy might not be Dorothy Parker, but she's not stupid.

This is her opportunity to settle old scores. To pay back Tom, to hurt him in a way that he can't let her know he's been hurt.

That this was murder and not an accident is beyond dispute; and all of a sudden, Daisy and Gatsby are on even terms.

"'I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed. Good night, old sport.'

"He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight - watching over nothing."

If Gatsby was a gangster, as is probable, then after the death of Myrtle Wilson, Daisy is a worthy gangster's moll.

Gatsby was there, and he felt that Daisy needed him. But there was no escape for Daisy, and no happy ending for Gatsby. They were both imprisoned in the past, and by the past.

And, "Rich girls don't marry poor boys."