9/21
Drop in the Ocean
I liked what I did last week so I’m going to do it again, plain and simple. There’s a song called “Drop in the Ocean” by Ron Pope that I used to listen to in middle school. The chorus starts with “a drop in the ocean/ a change in the weather/ I was praying that you and me might end up together.” These three lines alone speak to Gatsby’s persistent obsession and the desire for divine intervention to have his happy ever after. A line that particularly stands out to me in this song is “if you don’t love me, pretend,” as if that’s enough to satisfy the intense desire the speaker has. If we say that Gatsby is delusional, it could be comparative to Gatsby needing to feel the affection back regardless of it’s it real or not from Daisy. Jay Gatsby is willing to accept a figment of an idea if it means that he can say he has Daisy as his little trophy. One interpretation of the novel is that Gatsby wants Daisy to prove to himself that he has “made it” in the world, in the high stakes competitive life in the East. The song lyric asking someone to pretend to love the speaker speaks to Gatsby’s character and his innate desire to rise above the hand he was dealt as a kid and grow to be a powerful adult who fought tooth and nail to get where he is and have the pretty girl on his arm as proof. The final line of the song is “cause you are my heaven.” Heaven is symbolic of personal paradise, a sense that all is right in the end. Daisy is Gatsby’s end goal whether it’s love or it’s a idol he gets to keep by his side. This line alone could be used to sum up all of Gatsby’s choices and the reasoning. Daisy is his end goal, his happily ever after, his trophy, his idol, his everything.