Known for being one of the most prized works of literature, “The Great Gatsby” has been already been specified as a masterpiece that demonstrates life in “The Roaring Twenties.” “The Roaring Twenties” being a decade of hope, miracles, and whatever else can be said for positive and exultant feelings.
And so maybe just the setting itself can be looked upon as a reference to hope and expectations for that all-mighty happy ending (which, being realistic here, will never occur in this extremely screwed-up world).
But nothing can contend to the ultimate power of hope when involved with someone of the opposite sex.; that unwarranted amount of ambition and sometimes gag-worthy romantic actions that one does in order to win the heart of a certain special human being, in hopes of finally capturing their heart.
Hope. “To cherish a desire with anticipation.”
Example: Daisy Buchanan.
Daisy Buchanan is a symbol for all the inordinate amount of optimism and expectations for whatever it is that warrants enough importance to make you prone to disappointment.
James Gatsby holds great expectations when it comes to said girl. She is the light at the end of the tunnel, the reason he is who he is today.
And yet, it is not a newfound concept that hopes and expectations are sometimes met with blanking and utter disappointment.
“ There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusions. “
Gatsby has engulfed himself in endless wires that travel through his brain setting Daisy as this fairytale heroine and has brought himself to make Daisy to be this unrealistic epitome of perfection. He has spent five years building Daisy up to some type of unflawed and seamless precision.
Daisy is the epitome of Hope and Expectations and the proof of how we might not always get what we are hoping for.
For Gatsby, it’s his dreams of her living up the ideal he has stuck in his head. For people back in the 1920’s it was probably the possibility of a sprouting and better America. For us, well, there are tons of simple (and sometimes materialistic and extremely shallow) hopes that affect us every single day.
But we have them.
Another maybe tiny symbol would be the high stacks of books piled up in Gatsby’s house. Did we ever happen to see him in the actual act of absorbing literature? That would be a negative.
So Gatsby might be somewhat of a farce. Like those guys that pretend to own sports cars so they’ll obtain the oh-so-admirable blonde bimbo with the single digit IQ that is supposed to be made up for in the size of her breasts?
Well, our friend Gatsby here has books instead of sport cars and his ultimate goal is more the image of intelligence (and his claim of going to Oxford) than a female companion.
Yes. His books are the symbol of a façade. They are there to lead a person to believe something that is not entirely covering the facts.
Of course, they could also be representing Gatsby himself in the way that they hold secrets and stories that are unknown because they have yet to be opened. Kind of like Gatsby and his mysterious past that is yet to be determined.
So we have hopes that never reach our expectations, façades we put on to try and please other people or come off as something we are not, and secrets we keep and very rarely let out until someone happens to earn the sufficient amount of trust to have us open up to them completely.
So we live life following these repeating actions that characterize us as humans. Just like Gatsby himself is a compressed mass of ambition, loneliness, naivety, and then sometimes confidence, wealth, and a bleak sort of happiness, he is a symbol of everything we encounter as humans.
A symbol of Life.
No comments:
Post a Comment