The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald - Episode 4 - The End Of All Kinds Of Dreams! - a podcast by Christy and Garry Shriver

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald - Episode 4 - TheEnd Of All Kinds Of Dreams!

 

Hi, I’m Christy Shriver, and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

 

I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This is our fourth and final episode on this little book of constant surprises.  We have talked about turns of phrases, irony, the colors, more irony, motifs of the eyes, water and baptism, dust, cars, references to time- and did I mention irony-  

 

Are you trying to say that Fitzgerald sees a lot of irony in the world?  That things just aren’t what they are pretend or appear to be? 

 

I think I want to point out he uses a lot of irony- it just goes on and on.  Last week, we also talked about how tightly constructed and deliberate everything is- someone even used the word- geometric- everything fits together.  I also can see why you call it poetry- the phrases are often strange, but enjoyable to read.  And you’ll love this, Christy, I’m not sure how it all went down- but a lot of Fitzgerald’s metaphors were lifted right out of Zelda’s letters.  She was the metaphor master-maker of the family it seems!!! 

 

I know- I’ve read that stuff too, although It seems she wasn’t salty about him using her lines- she thought of it as collaboration more than plagiarism- who knows- at this point, I don’t guess it matters.  But the metaphors- and there is an endless number of them- really are delightful- and make me smile- they really do – like what we’re going to read today when he says, “Then he kissed her. At his lips’touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.  What does that even mean? So strange-  you have to really visualize something impossible to even begin to get the idea, but even then you’re  a little confused- this godlike event of creating Gatsby- became vulnerable man when Gatsby fell for Daisy- or maybe when Fitzgerald fell for Zelda- however far you want to take the metaphor but why do people like hearing it like that?   

 

Actually-There is neuroscience about that, and next week when we talk about T.S. Eliot we should talk a little about the neuroscience about why some words are just fun to listen to- that’s worth geeking out a little bit on- and Eliot is kind of like that too. 

 

He is, and I’ll look forward to hearing about that- I have to admit, I know next to nothing about neuroscience.  This week, though, we are going to have to wrecklessly fly with Daisy and watch her turn Gatsby’s cream colored circus wagon’s into a death car.  There is still so much to say, and I know we don’t have time to talk about everything- we’ve skipped so much already- but you will be happy to know- Garry that we will end where we began with a bit of history and yet another reference to the American Dream- but this time- I’ll not complain about it for one thing it is not the dream according to Thomas Jefferson, but according to Benjamin Franklin. 

 

Well, that explains your change of attitude- you have a crush on him! 

 

I do- he’s my favorite founding father, and one of these days, we’ll do a series on his autobiography- but until then we will just reference him- like we will here.  Last episode we delved into the life and times of the young Daisy Fay who I affectionately called the Ice Queen- and then her relationship to Gatsby- I made the case that there is one sense in that Daisy and Gatsby are almost dopplegangers- one is the male- the other female of kind of the same person-.  We talked about their connection in Louisville- their dreams but how the different circumstances of their lives, as well as they choices they made develop separately over the last five years and take them to very different places- 

 

 even if they physically are just across the bay from each other.  

 

Even so,  today, I want to start with a focus on Gatsby’s origin story- but before we do, let’s remember that this is a book about two men- we started episode 1 with that idea and I want to come back to it- even though it’s called The Great Gatsby- it’s not just Gatsby- some argue- not even mostly -and while we compared Gatsby to Daisy last week- we can also compare Gatsby to Nick- both are searchers-- both are from the Middle West.  One achieves awareness- the other…well….does not.  This is a story about Nick- he’s the character we are supposed to see ourselves in.  However, Nick’s role in the story is kind of interesting in that he really has two personas =- Persona 1 or Nick 1 tells the story- as a detached historian talking to us about events that happened to him in the summer two years ago- he recalls his New York summer from a place of understanding- it’s reflective- and all from the safety of the Middle West- but then there’s Nick 2 -the participant in the story- he’s a star struck 29 year old who’s bored with life back home, who’s enchanted with the East- with the possibilities that New York offers- he wants a part of the fast life- he’s ready for the the modern world- and the non-olfactory money they hand out in Manhattan- he just doesn’t know it will soon be what he calls an El Greco painting life. 

 

You know- both of those references at the end are very strange.  I remember the first time I really thought anything about El Greco’s art, although I’m pretty sure I’d heard of it before, was when I was taking a group of students through Toledo Spain and our tour guide showed us some of his work.  It is really freaky stuff.  It’s dark and disturbing.  

 

Exactly- I think that’s how Nick feels about everything we’re getting ready to talk about today.  The same goes for the Non-olfactory money- another great metaphor- 

  

non-smelling money- does money smell? 

 

Interestingly enough, I think Nick found out that it indeed does smell, and This is his story of his freaky experience in New York city with the smelly money.  The way this summer concludes will lead him to the believe he’s the only honest person he knows and there is something worth valuing in a world where there are returning trains, holly wreaths on doors and family members in the area.  Nick decides he finds a world like that is just more honest- when he says he is the only honest person he knows that’s the sense where- that is actually true- today we might say- it’s just more real.  

It’s certainly not true that Nick claims lives a life without ever lying- he’s always talking about two-timing these girls in the most non-chalant way.   

 

The Nick that goes East doesn’t see the value in the social contract you’re always talking about Garry.  He wants to jump into a world where you are ABOVE the rules – you get to live outside of a social contract that involves submission to community standards- if you’re rich you don’t have to wait your turn or play by commonly agreed upon rules- and that’s the thrill- you get to waive a white card at the cop!!! However, What Nick finds in his experiences in the East changes his perspective on himself- and on the world he wants to inhabit- 

 

And that is a very common experience for many young adults- you don’t have to be Nick from the Middle West.  If you’re young- there is something seductive about leaving the interior and going to the coast- East or West- I guess- depending on where you live-  thousands of students  dream of the NBA, Hollywood, the rap music scene, a  youtube contract, a million Tik Tok followers as a beauty influence-  just to mention a few- but in all of these cases the job may be fun- the appeal isn’t in the sport- there is this vision of limitless money, the buying of privilege…never being told no…- absolute freedom from any control.   

 

Many of us have waited for a train, a bus or plane and have watched the first class get on first first, or stood in line to get into a concert while the important people walked through the VIP entrance and into in a glass box, isn’t that what money buys?  Can’t money buy everything?  What’s that famous phrase- money can’t buy happiness but it can buy the boat… 

 

Quote the phrase 

 

And that is a big difference between Nick and Gatsby- Nick’s highest motivation isn’t really money or love- and maybe that’s what saves him from some of the toxicity that affects Gatsby.  When Nick returns home at the end of the book- he is not recreating a past childhood that he loved so much because he’s homesick- he is also not returning because he failed at life or can’t hack it- he’s returning because he’s a different person- he’s grown up- at the end of the book during the climactic scene where Daisy tells Gatsby that she loves Tom- and Tom exposes Gatsby’s mob connections- Nick makes a very strange comment- he says he just remembered that it’s his birthday- he was turning 30.   

 

Are we saying that is the age we grow up- written by a man who wasn’t 30 when he wrote it- although he almost was- is growing up what happens when we turn 30? 

 

 I think it’s something like that- the book actually came out the year Fitzgerald turned 30.  Some people may find Fitzgerald’s making a statement about not being naïve anymore more irony for you. 

 

But he sees the East with all its glamorous trappings shallow maybe- or at least artificial; Nick realizes that the person he admires more than anyone else he met- including his cousin- was indisputably- a fraud, a hoodlum, a murderer, basically a thug whose values are openly morally bankrupt.  At one point when Nick looks at Gatsby, he absolutely could believe he had killed people and says so.  But even that person- is still the best one of the lot of them.   

 

Well, it turns out that Gatsby isn’t the only murderer either. 

 

No- he isn’t.  At the wise old age of 32, after two years of reflecting on the strange neighbor who lived in a re-created French hotel, Nick has made some real judgements- and this book is a declaration of those judgement- although it’ definitely not didactic or moralistic-  Jay Gatsby was all those bad things I just said, no question- and Nick definitely disdains him for those things- HOWEVER- Nick’s had time to think about the world that created that person- and the kind of person that world rewards.  Who wins? Who’s destroyed?  And what destroyed them?  This book has three victims:- Gatsby, Myrtle and Wilson.  Only one of them was great.   

 

There’s one way to look at the book and say those three were not a part of the system or privileged class- that’s what killed them? It was the establishment.  The system was always rigged; Tom was never going to sell his car, never marry Myrtle nor was Gatsby ever going to get a “good girl”.  They were never going to win.   

 

You could see it that way.  Lots of people have, and that’s an easy answer, but it is unusual that great literature gives out simplistic answers.  The obvious problem with that answer is the number of counter-examples of real life rags to riches stories- and Nick’s family kind of challenges it since they built wealth the old-fashioned way of business building. 

 

Fitzgerald’s more nuanced argument is going to claim that the dream of success, wealth, love and happiness is not as easy as just accumulating cash- although, I’d like to test that theory personally. 

 

One thing to notice in Nick, especially in the final scenes of this story is a recognition to some degree that success- if it’s going to be worth having- must have a moral and or Civic component, if not both, and when you take that out what’s left is a fraudulent shallow value system that replaces Benjamin Franklin’s American Dream of success as defined by hard work and civic responsibility with something toxic, and devoid of loyalty - harmful not just to others but even yourself.  James Gatz traded in finishing his degree at the Lutheran University of St. Olaf while working as a janitor for something easier and likely way more fun –a path to success that doesn’t penalize the corrupt- a non-olfactory path 

 

...Daisy really kind of did the same thing when she married Tom- but- how does that happen? 

 

Well, in the case of James Gatz of rural North Dakota- the success happens by sheer force of will.  What we know about Gatsby is interesting- and comes in parts- in chapter 6- future Nick the historian breaks the chronology of the summer to give us Gatsby’s personal history. We get the rest of what we know about him in chapter 9 when we meet his dad.   

 

I’d like to put the whole story together because Christy, I think you will be interested in this historical angle. 

 

Please do! 

 

At the end of the book, when Mr. Gatz talks about James’ growing up years he references a book he found called Hop-along Cassidy and inside the cover James had handwritten a schedule for himself.  Now, what’s so historically interesting about this schedule is that it’s recognizable- American history teachers will tell you- what he writes is a list that is recognizably modeled after Benjamin Franklin guide to moral perfection as recorded in his autobiography.  Benjamin Franklin- btw-is one of America’s original American Dream stories- although there are thousands possibly millions that have followed in his footsteps all over this country.  Franklin was the fifteenth child in a Boston family of 17 children – no money- no East Egg- so much so that Franklin became a legally bound apprentice to his brother as a printer.  He worked his butt off to learn his trade and he was great at his job.  His brother was making lots of money off of Franklin’s work, and Franklin  believed his brother was exploiting him- so he ran away- which at that time was actually criminal- he had legally bound himself to his brother kind of like an indentured servant.  The minute Franklin ran he literally became an outlaw.  He could have been arrested by any person who wanted to collect the ransom and been sent back to Boston to work for his brother.  He fled to Philadelphia, Pennsylvaia, an up and coming town lots happen but eventually, he started a business and created a very successful periodical called Poor Richard’s Almanac and sold tens of thousands- which is impressive in a town with only 12,000 people- obviously it went viral across not just Philadelphia.  Almanacs were the second read book in the United States- after the Bible, and apparently his was really funny- all of a sudden, he was a celebrity AND he was rich- he would be rich for the rest of his life.  He printed a new one every year for 25 years- it was full of quotes that are famous to this day, things like “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”  Franklin by the end of his life had met the kings and Queens of Europe, owned property, started businesses, established public institutions like the post office and the library- he did all kinds of things- lots of them still around.  Anyway, where’s the connection with Gatsby?  Well,  Franklin had this plan for moral perfection- it’s famous- lots of people are familiar with it and try to follow it and have since he first wrote it- James Gatz’s plan for perfection is obviously a modification of Franklin’s famous list.  For example- Franklin’s original list says, “Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes or habitation” Gatz’s list says, “Bath every other day”; Franklin’s list says, “”Lose no time.  Be always employed in something useful.  Cut off all unnecessary actions” Gatz’s is “No wasting time at Shafter’s or ______a name undecipheral”.  What becomes obvious as you go down the list Franklin’s list and compare it to Gatz’s list is that Gatz deletes everything that has to do with morality or civic responsibility- an obvious omission.  What Fitzgerald is suggesting is that by the time we get to the 20th century- we still pursue dreams in America, we still wish upon stars- like Disney tells us, but there is a large number of people that have disconnected  success with our personal morality and/or community responsibility- loyalty of any kind except to oneself.  So, what does that get you? 

 

Well, it gets you an opportunity to ride a yacht.  James Gatz sees his opportunity and crosses the water.  A man named Dan Cody floats by on a yacht on Lake Superior.  He’d been loafing on the beach all day (so much for waste no time)- but he borrows a rowboat and crosses the water.  Fitzgerald puts it like this “The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.  He was a son of God- a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that- and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.  So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a 17 year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.”…Listen to this language …read “But his heart- page 99- “a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a wing’s fairy.”  

 

Well, let’s not discount this idea of remaking your identity-  into whatever you want- that also is totally American- and so often a great thing for lot of reasons.  How many immigrants come to this country with nothing but the shirt on their backs, and one generation later own businesses, have built wealth, their children are college graduates, and they invested in their communities- it quite literally has what made this country great! There are a lot of great countries, but America is unique in that money comes easier here compared to other parts of the world- That is uncontested.  It’s not a guarantee and there certainly are barriers- but it’s been the story of many people from every corner of the globe.  I will never forget my first teaching job, a young student by the name of ____________ was the valedictorian of _____________.  He had literally come here on a boat.  Throw in a couple of details here.  But that’s not Gatsby’s story-  

 

No, I think that’s the plot of the cartoon the American Tale about the Fievel Mousekewitz, the mouse from Russia. 

 

Gatsby’s model is- Dan Cody- Christy, I’m doing a little name symbolism myself –  

 

Well, aren’t you getting literary… 

 

Well, not really- it comes from two American heroes- Daniel Boone and Buffalo Bill Cody- Daniel Boone-  

 

Good ole Daniel Boone- the famous frontiersman- my mama graduated from Boones Creek High School- you know he “killed a bar on a tree in 1760” and carved those words in a tree near where she grew up in Washington County, Tennessee. 

 

Well, honestly I didn’t know you had such a close brush with frontier fame- he was famous but there is also a lot of folk lore about him that who knows if is even true- he was kind of a showman as was Buffalo Bill- who traveled the world literally with his Buffalo Bill Wild West Show pretending to be a cowboy- they both were kind of mythical creations.  

 

Well- that’s true- plus I want to add to that, the language is obviously biblical- Gatsby is on the fishing shore- like Jesus.  He founds his life on the rock- like St. Peter- but it’s all deliberately sacrilegious.  What Gatsby learns from Dan Cody is that the rules are not fair.  That the show is what is important.  The legend is more important that the substance.  They spend five years on that yacht together.  He learns about wealth.  He builds his myth.   Ella Kaye apparently murders Dan Cody, and through legalized corruption steals the $25,000 Cody had left Gatsby in his will.  Gatsby gets nothing; he’s bested by the establishment girl who knew had to manipulate the rules.  The next thing we know about Gatsby is that he’s a soldier meeting Daisy, the first nice girl he had ever known, the text says, “he took her”- there’s your polite euphemism for you- but he took her under false pretenses and afterwards she “vanished into her rich house, into her rich full life, leaving Gatsby nothing.”  After that he goes to Europe, fights in the war, studies a little at Oxford, gets a medal from the small country of Montenegro, comes back to Louisville while tom and Daisy are still on their wedding trip.  He was penniless.  and from there he starts working for the mob.  In chapter 6 there is a second party at Gatsby’s- this one Tom and Daisy both go to.  Daisy, as much as she pretends to like it finds it vulgar.  At the end of the night Nick says this, “He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: I never loved you.”  After she had obliterated three years with that sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken.  One of them was that, after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house- just as if it were five years ago.  “And she doesn’t understand, “ he said despairingly.  “She used to understand.  We’d sit for hours- He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolate path of fruit finds and discarded favors and crushed flowers”. 

 

Take a mental note that the flowers are now crushed- when he meets Daisy at Nick’s house there were lots of blooming non-broken flowers.” 

 

“I wouldn’t ask too much of her, “I ventured. “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 …….read til the incarnation was complete. 

 

Well, there it is..do you think that if Gatsby had not attached his vision of himself to Daisy he would have lived? 

 

I totally do- that would have been the far more sensible thing to do, but then he wouldn’t be Gatsby- the man who won’t let the childhood dream die.  Gatsby at this point in his life had already had an opportunity to be disillusioned.  He’d gone through the rottenness of the Dan Cody death, he’d survived the rottenness of WW1- his young love crush married the rich boy- and yet he persists in this dream of whatever Daisy represents for him- for five long years he’s amassing money at any cost and building a love and a lover in his mind that is totally separate from the actual person of Daisy- This is not the common love story- the traditional route is for someone to marry for money- or marry for love and give up money- Gatsby accumulates money to purchase love- a vision of himself and who he believes Daisy represents- which we can clearly see is very unlike the actual Daisy.  But Gatsby never questions his quest- it’s fantastic and absurd and wild – I really don’t know what is fueling this passion- 

 

  That IS the greatness of Gatsby from which we get the title.  

 

 It Is.  And I know I’m getting ahead of myself, but not by much, when Daisy- the real Daisy absolutely betrays him in the worst way humanly possible- she will literally murder someone then leave him to take the blame- he still won’t let go of the dream- and he just stands under her window and then by the phone.  It’s sad and obviously pathetic- such a contrast to the moment he falls in love with daisy in a scene – listen to this….page 110- it’s beauty, it’s divinity,…. 

 

It’s impossible. 

 

There’s a buzz-kill! 

 

 I think it’s important consider that if a real relationship were ever going to exist between Daisy and Gatsby- she was going to have to become a real person- and that is not a small thing.  Gatsby enters in to Daisy’s real house, she kisses him, tells him she loves him then the nurse brings in her daughter, Pammy, the one she has with Tom.  I found this detail interesting. Life doesn’t get more real than a child, but  Nick points out that Gatsby looks at the child with surprise never believing before that she had existed.  In other words, how is he going to obliterate the existence of Pammy who is half Tom/half Daisy. 

 

Yes- and things are really going to go downhill from here- but before they do- we can’t skip what is probably the most famous line in all the book.  Gatsby and Nick are talking about Daisy, and Gatsby makes that famous observation, “Her voice is full of money.”   

 

It’s a very interesting thing to say- Daisy’s charm is connected to the attraction of wealth, money and love all three of which hold similar attractions.  And this is where Daisy and Gatsby are in fact very similar- Gatsby has a large capacity it seems to love, but the pursuit of money is a substitute for that or at least meshed with that.   

 

What do you mean by that? 

 

Well, we can see it in how Tom and Gatsby look at money- maybe it’s the difference between the way you and I look at money and how people who just have endless loads of it look at it- when Tom buys a car or a house or a horse- he’s buying just the material possession itself- the abstract benefits of having money he already has- the power, the position, the connections and opportunity- he doesn’t know a world without those things.  But that’s not Gatsby and it’s not most of us.  When Gatsby amasses wealth, he’s not just buying a house, a car or a hydroplane- he’s buying a dream, a purpose, a ticket to inside a world he can’t access.  Gatsby, like all of us really, doesn’t know what money can and can’t buy- he doesn’t know the limits of money- he doesn’t know that there are different kinds of money- that money earned peddling liquor out of pharmacies won’t buy the same things that Tom’s money buys- like a “nice” girl like Daisy.   

 

You know there’s that famous line that Earnest Hemmingway said that Fitzgerald said that Fitzgerald didn’t say- Hemingway claims that Fitzgerald said to him once, “You know the rich are different than you and me?’ to which Hemingway claims he said back, “They have more money.” 

 

That conversation- although something Hemingway made up to make fun of Fitzgerald for being so ennamored with money- is still interesting.  Fitzgerald’s criticism of America does seem to rest on the irresponsibility of those people with money and the power to shape the world.  Fitzgerald sees corruption--  and its symbolized with whatever he seems to be describing when he talks about Manhattan.  In this book Manhattan is amoral- it’s non-olfactory money- money with no morality at all attached to it- not good- not bad- just money- and maybe that’s true for Manhattan- maybe it isn’t –Manhattan is just the big city in this story-  but removing from money a moral position- what does that do?  And in a world of amorality- who wins?  In this case, there is no doubt that Tom wins and Gatsby loses.  If Gatsby hadn’t gotten involved emotionally with Daisy that would not have been the case. 

 

So, let’s get in the cars and go into amoral Manhattan with these five 

 

I do want to point out a couple of things about cars- cars are HUGE in the 1920s- buying cars had just been made possible ten years before by Henry Ford and the assembly line.  Because of this- buying used cars had just started to become a thing- notice that Daisy had a car as a teenager- that would have been extremely uncommon- but noticing people’s car would have been more important than it even is today- it’s a sign of your status- especially if they were new.  I also want to point out that this car that is described as being Gatsby’s car absolutely does NOT exist as Fitzgerald describes it-  rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns. There is no such car that actually looks like that- we have to make it up in our heads.  But anyway, something to think about… 

 

We hit on this a couple of episodes ago, when we mentioned that the cars symbolically represented the drivers who drove them as well as the WAY they drive represents how they are living their lives.  This scene is all about the cars, so it’s important to revisit this idea- when Tom figures out that Daisy and Gatsby are having an affair- he very hypocritically, by the way- loses his mind- “the transformation from libertine to prig was soon to be complete”- to borrow a phrase- but his reaction is to swap cars.  He’s going to let Gatsby drive his car to down- in a way- okay- you want to live my life, here’s your five minute opportunity- he stops at Wilson’s only for Wilson to tell him, basically that he’s discovered his wife is having an affair- and all the while Dr. TJ Eckelberg and Myrtle are watching the exchange.   

 

When they get to the hotel- in the heat of the afternoon- there is a confrontation- and Gatsby finds out what money can and cannot buy.  When Daisy is confronted with the reality that Gatsby is a common gangster, it’s over.  When Tom realizes that Daisy is NOT going to leave him and that he has successfully Alpha-maled- Gatsby- so to speak he tells Daisy to get in Gatsby’s car and as a way to dominate Gatsby- has Gatsby symbolically return Daisy to Tom’s house- return the golden girl to its rightful shelf.   

 

But of course,  we never see Daisy get behind the wheel of Gatsby’s car.  What we know is what Gatsby tells Nick, he says that “she was very nervous and she thought it would steady her to drive” 

 

Let’s read that, 

 

“and this woman rushed out at us just as we were passing a car coming the other way.  It all happened in a minute but it seemed to me that she wanted to speak to us, thought we were somebody she knew.  We,, first Daisy turned away from the woman toward the other car, and then she lost her nerve and turned back.  The second my hand reached the wheel I felt the shock- it must have killed her instantly.” “It ripped her open”. “Don’t tell me, old sport.”  He winced. “Anyway- Daisy stepped on it.  I tried to make her stop but she couldn’t so I pulled the emergency brake.  Then she fell over into my lap and I drove on.”  “She’ll be alright tomorrow, I’m just going to wait here and see if he tries to bother her about that unpleasantness this afternoon.” 

 

Well, you can see that the Ice Queen is not careless, but deliberately destructive.  She absolutely hits Myrtle intentionally and doesn’t even stop to see if she is dead.  This will lead to two other deaths.  For the rest of the book, Gatsby’s car is not referred to as the cream colored car- the one that combines white  and gold- innocence and wealth, but the death car.  And another point to make – when they all get back to the house- Jordan wants to go out with Nick claiming it’s just 9:30 while Tom and Daisy plot while eating cold chicken. – they are callous and cold- plotting or indifferent.  

 

The final time Nick sees Gatsby he has decided that Gatsby is better than everyone else in the story and he tells him so.  On the day of Gatsby’s death , Gatsy puts on his swimsuit and gets on an air mattress in the swimming pool- the final baptism.  He still believes Daisy will call.  Let’s read the passage of what happened after the chauffeur hears the shots.  “page 169-170”. 

 

Remember, he’s using that word holocaust BEFORE the holocaust in Europe, so that word doesn’t have the emotional content it does for us.  That’s also true for the reference to the swastika-that has nothing to do with Hitler  A holocaust is a slaughter on a mass scale caused by fire.  

 

Well, two of the people who died already lived in the valley of ashes-  but we’ve already gone down that symbolism- you can think about this stuff forever and just make your head spin.  I want to jump to the funeral and really let get to a couple of final thoughts- no one shows up at the funeral.  Meyer Wolfsheim and his crew don’t, Daisy and her crew don’t- although Nick will eventually confront Tom for basically telling Wilson Myrtle was having an affair with Gatsby and causing the murder- it’s literally months later and Tom is self-righteous about it.  Gatsby’s dad shows up; he’d found out about his son’s death from the newspaper.  When He and Nick talk  Mr. Gatz says this about his son “If he’d of lived he’d of been a great man.  A man like James J. Hill.  He’d of helped build up the country.” 

 

And of course, Nick, uncomfortably lies in response and says, “That’s true.”   

 

Klipspringer calls, Nick invites him to the funeral, but Klipspringer only wants a pair of shoes he’d left there- now remember, this is the guy who had moved in with Gatsby.   

 

The only person who attends the funeral is owl-eyes and the only thing he says is, “the poor son-of-a bitch”.  Now that’s a vulgarity- obviously- but why say that?  It’s a vulgar almost religious reference to a person with no father- a corruption of the phrase “a son of god”.  What does old owl eyes- see?  He sees a man with no roots- nothing to ground him- to keep his perspective in place- and it is in the shallow soil of the rootless amoral money- that Gatsby gets lost.  He wanted a past, a different past, he wanted to rewrite the past, he wanted to inject fake roots and make his life something it wasn’t- and that was something all the money in the world could not buy for him. 

 

And so, Fitzgerald ends his book with this meditation about America- it’s again some of those famous lines in the book that people just quote wondering what they mean. 

 

One bit of trivia about the end paragraph is that it was actually the conclusion of chapter 1 when Nick goes back to West Egg about being with Tom and Daisy on that first night- but Fitzgerald repositions it after the story was over- it’s very poetic- Garry will you read the final page of the book. 

 

What are we supposed to think? 

 

Well, I guess we beat on- boats against the current- it is what builds nations- we run faster, stretch out our arms, we may run up against currents that beat us back- dreams that die- the establishment, the corruption in the system will often win- but in the way rootless Americans seek to build a past, build a future- build a dream= so we go on towards the green light- however you want to define that in your life. 

 

Dang- I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be encouraged or depressed!!!   

 

HA!! It’s why it’s the GREAT AMERICAN Novel- who even knows.  But it’s beautiful, we see ourselves in it and we love it.  

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