The Great Gatsby is One of the Great American Novels

It is quite remarkable that at the debatable height of the "American Dream," F. Scott Fitzgerald chose to write a book about failure. In this American classic, Nick Carraway, a mid-Westerner with family money, takes us through his time living in the Long Island community of West Egg. He is the neighbor of the "new money" socialite Jay Gatsby, whose, Nick finds out, greatest goal in life is to get the Golden Girl, Nick's cousin Daisy Buchanan. Daisy lives across the sound from Gatsby with her husband, and old college buddy of Nick's, Tom Buchanan. With the help of Nick and infamous golf champion Jordan Baker, Gatsby and Daisy reconnect after five years apart. Trying to make this relationship float quickly becomes a challenge as the main players in the book, each more sinful than the next, interact, leading them inevitably all to sink.

It is so easy to compress this tale into a quick blurb with an ominous ending such as the above, especially to capture the interests of the young minds who are introduced to it in high school classes across the nation. However, this short, little book, has more layers than Gatsby's pile of shirts. And it would also have Daisy crying.

At the surface, there is this man who, much like Fitzgerald himself, had fallen in love with a woman whom he lost, Fitzgerald because of lack of money, Gatsby because of World War I. Gatsby then decides to win her heart by making money and a name for himself and leading the lavish life Daisy is used to. The first half of the book undoubdtedly reads just like that: a romance. Man pines for one true love and will save her from her passionless and neglectful marriage. However, Fitzgerald wrote not a romanticized reality, but an observation of human life. Things are not as simple as they seem.

The second half of the book is the death of the dream. Life is much more complicated than what Gatsby had in mind. He had dreamed so long to be with Daisy, his long lost love, the green light at the end of the dock, that he had unrealistic expectations for what was to come. Daisy had lived five years without Gatsby in her life and it would be impossible to erase those five years so that Gatsby may capture what they once shared.

Aaron Sorkin always says that characters are driven by intentions, or what they want: "they want the money, they want the girl, they want to get to Philadelphia." Gatsby wants the girl. But to what extent? He has this vision of the past of which he cannot let go. A vision of love, but also of wealth, and lineage, and a big house in the South. Gatsby, a man who has achieved the American dream, is a self-made man, with a mansion in Long Island, is not satisfied. He came from nothing and made something, but he still wants to feel as though he had come from something, and to Gatsby, that is another perk of being with Daisy. He is also not satisfied when he does reach his goal. He made money, had the big house, and now finally, had the girl too. But it wasn't enough to just be with Daisy, he wanted her to say she never loved Tom. He wanted to go back in time to the times when he could have had her to himself, the lineage, and the big house in the South. Gatsby was holding on to that idea and would be unsatisfied with anything that could have happened with Daisy, because nothing would be exactly like what he had envisioned. Even with all of the devotion and the seemingly true love, their relationship was always doomed to fail.

The narration is where Gatsby really shines. Fitzgerald is said to have spent five years writing the novel, dwelling on the sound of every sentence, and it most definitely shows: Every sentence is needed, every period is purpouseful. The language bounces and floats around. There is immense levity when describing Gatsby's party, yet, a richer tone when the storyline demands it. No matter what, we never lose our reliable narrator, Nick, who is an observer in the Gatsby-Daisy-Tom debacle.

And after all of these layers and symbols and narration, we have the title that asks the age old question: Is Gatsby great? I am going to preface the following by reminding you quite simply that "art is subjective," and there might possibly never been a more artistic book than The Great Gatsby, the pages are laced with lyrical images. So here is what I think.

I think his quest is an honorable one. As a romantic myself, I cannot deny saying that I saw this book as a romantic tale and his quest one of love. Yes, it is tinted in obsession and riddled with problems, but at its core, Gatsby's quest is about his love for Daisy. So although he does not succeed, I would say that it is still an honorable one. One does not need to succeed to be great.