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'Cause people often acting like Gatsby: live in a mirage, unrealistic dreams, high expectations, not always (so) romantic as described in the book. So there are

'Cause people often acting like Gatsby: live in a mirage, unrealistic dreams, high expectations, not always (so) romantic as described in the book. So there are natural reasons to be sympathetic. Have doubts if you can understand it all in high school, but for 20-30+ people it's great book and shows perfectly what happened if you are obsessed with your dreams.

mjevans 6y ago
Can we agree it's not-the-best but has a good moral message about the danger of living in an illusionary bubble?
- thundergolfer 6y ago
  The book’s message about fantasy is much richer than you’re giving it credit for. Gatsby isn’t simply a wild dreamer, he has a very specific dream, a dream that is wrapped up in the individualistic American dream and its tension with class. He’s also not living in an illusion, it’s repeatedly noted that he’s chasing the past (which he had with Daisy), but fatally cannot catch it because he needs something he had to have owned before he was even born. Nobility. Gatsby is an enormously capable and wonderful person. He is both ridiculously resourceful, and interpersonally treasured. He falls in love with a rich young woman, Daisy, who herself is interpersonally treasured but also whose wealth is an inevitable draw on the dirt poor Gatsby. Against all odds, Gatsby rises through American life to be possibly even richer than Tom Buchanan, the old-money rich man Daisy marries. Despite Gatsby’s accomplishments and abilities, he is still unable to wrest back Daisy from her old money life, highlighting the distance between them that was always class-based and foundational, a distance that would had wrecked their relationship even if Gatsby had never gone to war and left Daisy. The old-money Daisy and Tom “were careless people”, notes Nick the narrator. Gatsby’s fatal flaw was how much he cared about and believed in the American Dream and those who supposedly occupied it. He cared and did everything right, but they didn’t care that he did, because the American Dream means nothing to the upper-class. Climb it, against all odds, and they’ll still sneer, or in Daisy’s case be too weak to abandon the security of class. I don’t think you should read The Great Gatsby for it’s moral message about living in an illusion. It’s a story about the American Dream and it’s conflict with class. Having written that out stream of consciousness style, I’ve gone to check the Wikipedia and under Analysis the top two subheadings are “The American Dream” and “Class Permanence” so I think I have picked up what Fitzgerald was putting down, more or less. I initially loved The Great Gatsby because Fitzgerald writes beautiful sentences, and because Gatsby had a Randian hero quality to him. But after a while the political and gender commentary has become equally as valued.
  - mjevans 6y ago
    Your takeaway is much deeper than mine was; it might have been informed by more world knowledge than I had when in highschool. That might explain why others say they got more out of the book later in life, after having been exposed to the concepts that weren't something I'd even known to look for at that point in my life (and thus were also not stored in my impression of slogging through the book).
    - thundergolfer 6y ago
      Yeah I read the book first at like 22-23, then at 25-26. I never had to read it in high school, but as school reading goes, I bet I would have loathed it. I had to read _Catcher In The Rye_ and yeah, did not like it.
  - ekam 6y ago
    Great take

mjevans 6y ago

Can we agree it's not-the-best but has a good moral message about the danger of living in an illusionary bubble?

thundergolfer 6y ago
The book’s message about fantasy is much richer than you’re giving it credit for. Gatsby isn’t simply a wild dreamer, he has a very specific dream, a dream that is wrapped up in the individualistic American dream and its tension with class. He’s also not living in an illusion, it’s repeatedly noted that he’s chasing the past (which he had with Daisy), but fatally cannot catch it because he needs something he had to have owned before he was even born. Nobility. Gatsby is an enormously capable and wonderful person. He is both ridiculously resourceful, and interpersonally treasured. He falls in love with a rich young woman, Daisy, who herself is interpersonally treasured but also whose wealth is an inevitable draw on the dirt poor Gatsby. Against all odds, Gatsby rises through American life to be possibly even richer than Tom Buchanan, the old-money rich man Daisy marries. Despite Gatsby’s accomplishments and abilities, he is still unable to wrest back Daisy from her old money life, highlighting the distance between them that was always class-based and foundational, a distance that would had wrecked their relationship even if Gatsby had never gone to war and left Daisy. The old-money Daisy and Tom “were careless people”, notes Nick the narrator. Gatsby’s fatal flaw was how much he cared about and believed in the American Dream and those who supposedly occupied it. He cared and did everything right, but they didn’t care that he did, because the American Dream means nothing to the upper-class. Climb it, against all odds, and they’ll still sneer, or in Daisy’s case be too weak to abandon the security of class. I don’t think you should read The Great Gatsby for it’s moral message about living in an illusion. It’s a story about the American Dream and it’s conflict with class. Having written that out stream of consciousness style, I’ve gone to check the Wikipedia and under Analysis the top two subheadings are “The American Dream” and “Class Permanence” so I think I have picked up what Fitzgerald was putting down, more or less. I initially loved The Great Gatsby because Fitzgerald writes beautiful sentences, and because Gatsby had a Randian hero quality to him. But after a while the political and gender commentary has become equally as valued.
- mjevans 6y ago
  Your takeaway is much deeper than mine was; it might have been informed by more world knowledge than I had when in highschool. That might explain why others say they got more out of the book later in life, after having been exposed to the concepts that weren't something I'd even known to look for at that point in my life (and thus were also not stored in my impression of slogging through the book).
  - thundergolfer 6y ago
    Yeah I read the book first at like 22-23, then at 25-26. I never had to read it in high school, but as school reading goes, I bet I would have loathed it. I had to read _Catcher In The Rye_ and yeah, did not like it.
- ekam 6y ago
  Great take