The Great Gatsby: "So, I Beat Ceaselessly Against the Currents." in Literary Essays

“And as I sat there brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in the that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believe in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms father….And one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (136).

When I first fell in love with literature, it was when I read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. My seventeen year old self did not understand the entirety of the novel. When you are that young, you aren’t supposed to understand all of it. The deeper meaning of it all. Usually, most seventeen year olds only can grasp the surface of what they read, see, and even feel. However, it takes much longer period to understand the deeper meaning behind actions, behaviors, and circumstances.

When I picked this book up again to read it in its entirety, I was scared as I began. Quite terrified actually because the first part of the novel was a little slow. I questioned myself:

Why did I love this novel? Why did I fall in love with it? Why do I reference it so much?

For those who know me, this novel turned my life into a completely different direction. It taught me that great Literature was not boring. It was exciting. That “high brow” Literature is just as good, in many ways, better than those Stephen King books I was dabbing into. It also holds another memorable memory which is about a classmate of mines. He was in the gifted classes throughout his education. When I was able to explain, in some parts, what the characters were doing or what type of situations they were encountering, he looked upon me with such admiration and respect. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was on an equal, academic playing field with one of my peers. This moment has influenced me in many ways throughout my educational experience…and my life experiences.

So, you can understand why I question why I ever proclaimed to love this novel. It is because it’s a part of my identity and what type of reading I would be doing in the future…and why I decided to get a BA in English. However, the great news is that the novel did not fail me. What I came out with is much more than I ever could hope for.

Reading The Great Gatsby at 32 is the highlight of my year. Reading it after fifteen years made me realize how much I missed…completely missed or wasn’t reading carefully in the novel when I was seventeen. It also made me aware that I have more sympathy for all the characters…even the ones who, it appears, Fitzgerald villainified.

Let me start off with how I viewed The Great Gatsby at seventeen. For me, it was an exciting novel because Gatsby is involved with organized crime. It also was scandalous because Gatsby went after a married woman even though they knew each other five years prior to her getting married. The two scenes that were imprinted in my seventeen year old’s mind are:

When Tom confronts Daisy and Gatsby at the hotel in front of Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker. When Daisy hits Myrtle Wilson with Gatsby’s car.

Those are the two vivid and vibrant scenes. These scenes are done well by Fitzgerald. I cannot attest if these scenes stick out to other seventeen year olds now when they read it…or anyone who is decades older after he/she read sthis book, yet, these scenes will always stick with a seventeen year old Sophia.

But there are new scenes that stick out for thirty-two year old Sophia…that are just as important as those two prior scenes that stick with my former seventeen year old self.

Including the two, here are several others that stand out to me:

When Tom takes Nick to the Valley of Ashes to visit Myrtle When Nick and Jordan have tea and discuss that Gatsby wants Nick to invite Daisy over for tea When Gatsby and Daisy meet the first time after five years at Nick’s cottage When Daisy inappropriately behaves at her house by kissing Gatsby when Tom excuses himself to get drinks Tom’s confrontation with Gatsby at the Plaza hotel Daisy running over Myrtle Wilson killing Gatsby Nick, Gatsby’s father, Owl Eyes, and few others attending Gatsby’s funeral Tom exposing to Nick after he and Daisy returned to East Egg about how Tom implicit in influencing Wilson to murder Gatsby

These scenes are quite important now to me more than ever for they also characterize the story extremely well. There are also scenes where Jordan behaves despicable and haughty and careless about not being the center of Nick’s attention. These scenes stick out to me now because they are what make Fitzgerald’s novel a masterpiece. These scenes are about relationships and how complicated relationships can be when you have certain people in those relationships. When you turn thirty as Nick does on the eve of Tom’s and Gatsby’s confrontation, you realize that life is more serious. It is not a Candylane game. It is a chess game…and the rules are more complicated, and the prizes you desire have higher stakes.

For Gatsby, the prize is winning Daisy’s love. In wanting to continue from where they left off. If anything, for me, as I stewed it over for fifteen years, one of the central themes of The Great Gatsby is about time. Time changes people all the time, and it’ll never stop changing people. Time ages us. Time shows us the error of our ways. Time changes us. It changes our decisions which influentially change our behaviors. Time gives us a constant view of our circumstances and what we are willing to decide in how we deal with those circumstances.

Gatsby’s misguided hope within his dream costs him a lot—that includes the end of his life. For Gatsby, he is stuck on repeat prior five years ago. Even though readers see in the novel that Gatsby has collected clippings of Daisy. Even though Gatsby has built his wealth as a goal to win Daisy. In a sense, Gatsby, in peripheral vision, knows that Daisy has made choices because of time, but he believes that she was forced to make those choices because he was not an option for her as a suitor. Simply, he was not in the picture so therefore, she went ahead and was forced to marry somewhere else.

Yet, Nick Carraway, who is the narrator, reveals to us that Daisy is someone who doesn’t wait. This is apparent when Nick reveals in the narration when Gatsby was sent to war:

“He did extraordinarily well in the war. He was a captain before he went to the front, and following the Argonne battles he got his majority and the command of the divisional machine-guns. After the Armistice he tried frantically to get home, but some complication of misunderstanding sent him to Oxford instead. He was worried now—there was a quality of nervous despair in Daisy’s letters. She didn’t see why he couldn’t come. She was feeling the pressure of the world outside, and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all” (113).

Daisy wanted Gatsby to return to be reassured that she was making the right decision in waiting for him—waiting for him so they can marry. However, the next lines reveal that Daisy’s impatience and inability to continue to wait on Gatsby:

“Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the season; suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men, and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside her bed. And all the time something within her was crying for a decision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately—and the decision must be made by some force—of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality—that was close at hand.

That force took shape in the middle of spring with the arrival of Tom Buchanan. There was a wholesome bulkiness about his person and his position, and Daisy was flattered. Doubtless there was a certain struggle with a certain relief. The letter reached Gatsby while he was still in Oxford” (114).

It is apparent that, for me, that Daisy could not wait for Gatsby because she wanted her life to start; she cared more about her life starting than waiting to start her life with Gatsby. Throughout the novel, you see Daisy’s impatient behavior. When she comes to one of Gatsby’s parties, it seems she is impatient about who is at the party and not too impressed with Gatsby’s party to where she goes home. Another scene shows Daisy being impatient and spoiled when it comes to how hot the day is. During Tom’s and Gatsby’s heated confrontation, Daisy impatiently wants to leave as she cannot take the heat of the confrontation.

And Gatsby does not realize this about Daisy or does not want to realize it as Nick characterizes in his story. Due to absent time that Gatsby has missed with Daisy, he does not see that Daisy is not the delicate flower he characterizes. She is someone who is careless, impatient, irresponsible, and very entitled. She also cannot handle confrontation well and waffles in her decision to finally admit that she loves TOM and GATSBY. However, I find, she loves Tom more because Tom is able to take care of her in a way Gatsby cannot.

Gatsby’s downfall is 1)not admitting that he hardly knows Daisy as well as he thinks he does; 2) being in denial by upholding a five year ago image he has of Daisy 3) counting on that Daisy loves him and was forced to marry Tom (which I believe she wanted to marry Tom because she was attractive to him, and Tom was available), and 4) not acknowledging the truth that is staring him in the face—that Daisy moved on because that is what times does to us all—it forces us to move on and make decisions for it works against us as well as for us.

And that’s one treasure I discovered about reading this at thirty-two. Time really doesn’t wait for no one. In all moments, we all have to make difficult decisions. Of course, there are some decisions that are no brainers, but most decisions will be moderate and/or difficult. That’s the way life is. And The Great Gatsby shows us this. It shows us that the past decisions we make…we really cannot repeat. And for many situations we were in previously, we just cannot pick up where we left off. Gatsby’s tragic flaw is his hope. Hope is a beautiful quality to have. What comes from hope is wonder, imagination, or endless possibilities. However, unfortunately, Gatsby’s hope is misplaced by believing that Daisy will pick up from where they left off and share that kind of vision with him.

She can’t…and maybe she never could. Apparently, many times, we don’t belong with another because our personalities…or behaviors…our characteristics are not in sync with that other person. No matter how hard we try, some of us have to realize that we keep crashing against waves that will drive us back into our past…and we won’t get anywhere at all.

This is why I quoted the last two paragraphs of the novel…and what I have realized being in my thirties. Time is sand through an hourglass as they say. It is something that slowly slips through the narrow, hallow space and ends up at the bottom of the glass. The sand that has gone through it tells a story of how it got to the bottom. However, the sand on the top going through? It represents how the sand will go through the hallow, narrow space in the middle to the bottom of the glass.

The decisions we make with what we have in how that sand goes through the hour glass is up to us for we cannot stop it from going through the hourglass. All we have control over is how the sand will go through the glass while it is making it to the bottom.

Gatsby decided how that sand was going through his glass. It was to dream the dream that he took a lousy gamble on—winning Daisy back. However, like Nick Carraway, I am one of the cruel judges looking in the inside from the outside. Of course, it is easier for me to see, like Nick does, Gatsby falling through the rabbit hole that he will never climb back out of. Yet, for Gatsby, the way he decided to fall through his rabbit hole is by his own choices.

However, Nick ends the story with vital, insightful quote: “”So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (136).

Nick, Jordan, Tom…and Daisy…have to move on. We all do. Yes, there is so much I want to say in this writing about all of them…and I will do it later. But for today, my intuitive focus has been on…Gatsby and Daisy….and time.

I believe the reason I went into this direction is because, again, I’ve learned that times doesn’t wait for us. It has sunken in. And each day, I have the strength to realize and put forth effort to spend my time the way it will enrich my life instead of wasting it. I love to work. I do. I love my life right now. Yet, I’ve come to realize that my boat will beat against the currents ceaselessly no matter what. What I do have control over is how I handle guiding that boat.

Oh Gatsby…how you disappointed me when I was seventeen. I thought that you caused your own demise when it comes to George Wilson murdering you. Despite that, I liked you for some reason.

But now, I know. I loved you because of your hope. It is okay to have hope as long as you know what you are getting into when it is misplaced.

As for Daisy, when I was seventeen, I hated your guts. But now, I understand what you did. It is not fair for any person to wait on someone else. Time does force us to move forward with our lives. Yes, you are a spoiled brat. You acted helplessly and even quite entitled. Now, I realize I cannot hold you responsible for moving on with your life. It is not fair for anyone to put their lives on hold knowing that the other person may not come through for them as they should.

So, we all beat on…learning more as we become older than we did when we were younger…

And for me, that’s one of the biggest lessons in The Great Gatsby. We cannot and should not repeat the past. We have to enjoy the present and continue to look forward to our future goals/actions/behaviors.

Regards, SMF