The Great Gatsby

 “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
—final line from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I've often heard people talk about the book as if the important thing was a description of the excessive luxury of Gatsby's parties, as if the purpose of the writing was to comment on the ills of society in the pre-Depression era.  Decadence is only incidental, though.  Spoiler alert from here on: The parties only existed to provide an opportunity for Daisy to visit and see Gatsby again, and not only see him but be impressed by what he had obtained for himself.  Once she has met him—and told him how she dislikes the parties—he puts and end to them entirely.

The vital element in the story is the tragedy of Gatsby's yearning for Daisy, which is hinted at in the first chapter of the book and drives the entire story.  Everything in the book is about Gatsby's desire to regain his lost love—who proves to be a terribly unworthy object of affection, though he doesn’t ever realize it.

While we're discovering Gatsby himself, a disaster is germinating that eventually gives us reason to dislike most of the other characters, and by the end their concerns are all shallow compared to Gatsby’s.  Nick, the narrator, is a genuinely decent person, and despite obvious faults we find reason to root for Gatsby—partially because he has little pretense of being more than he is.  But in the other main characters, who ultimately prove villainous, we see a flaw that contributes to the final disaster.  Daisy's vanity and cowardice, Tom's bullying attitude and racism, Jordan's laziness, Myrtle's callous disregard for her husband...they all point to selfishness.  These main characters lack character: they're unwilling to step forward to act for others' interests.  Their selfishness isn't wholly unrelated to the general attitude of partygoers, but it's not there to comment on the Roaring Twenties.  It’s there in support of the ultimate tragedy of a man who feels such strong love for a woman that it shapes his whole life into a monumental effort to regain her, only to be at the cusp of reaching his goal just before it is brought to an end forever.  Gatsby had a dream that his past could once again be his future, but he's the only one who worked to make his dream of the future happen.  And yet, as so many of us can empathize with, his past would never actually come back.

The tragedy is founded in Daisy already being married to Tom, and we can't overlook that Gatsby is unconcerned about upsetting that marriage (though we certainly find sympathy when we see Tom's substantial moral failings, and especially his marital infidelity).  Gatsby doesn't see the problems of his approach because of the focus demanded by the intensity of what he feels.  Of course, we always have a choice in how we react to what we feel, but while Gatsby isn’t totally innocent he’s also not deserving of his untimely end.

Beyond the injustice, Gatsby’s story is tragic because he’s the one who knows real love.  Granted, the best meaning of the word “love” is an attitude and a determination that is the opposite of selfishness, but we also allow for a particular meaning of the word as a feeling and an experience.  Gatsby understands that experience like others don’t; no one else in the story gives any indication of being motivated by or understanding that kind of feeling.  What confounds me is that people don't talk about that central point, and it makes me wonder if they simply don't know that intense feeling themselves.  Sure, the average person understands the normal human desire for companionship and affection, and whatever they do experience certainly has enough impact to be a recurring topic in all forms of art.  But when people read this book and fail to extract the main point of it, it makes me think that they haven't ever known the very real kind of love as an emotion and an experience that the fictional Gatsby did.  It isn't something that one forgets.  I really don’t aim to judge people based on their reaction to the book, but I just don’t hear people comment on the most profound and clear reason for the story, and I wonder how such a strong theme can be missed.