Month: February 2022

Blog Post #5

When we were little, we dreamed of being rich and famous so we could have everything we ever wanted. Back then, it was probably toys, unlimited candy, and ice cream for breakfast every day. As we got older, we realized the value of money and wanted things like unlimited food, no gas payments, and no rent. Not only money, but we also start to value relationships more as adults than children. We learn from middle school and high school relationships and figure out what we want and what we don’t want in a relationship. For most of us, we want something sustainable that feels safe and happy. The fun, dangerous stuff is nice, but as an adult, that’s not as much of a priority as it is as an adolescent. 

When Daisy and Gatsby were young, they loved each other and thought they were going to be together forever, and then the war got in the way. They thought maybe after the war they would reunite and continue their love story when everything went back to normal. But Daisy’s life followed a different path. She married another man but maybe she still loved Gatsby?

She definitely has ample reasons to divorce or at least quietly cheat on Tom so why does she never leave Tom and be with Gatsby? She is a very passive person and does not want to cause any trouble. She lives in the old world mindset that women are property and can’t do anything for themselves. However, the world around her is changing to be more progressive and female-forward. She has valid reasons to love Gatsby and be with him but she never does, possibly because she never loved him in the first place. Gatsby’s newfound wealth does not change her mind because she has a stable husband and that is her only priority. She does not want fun and wealth; she wants something that will keep her status high and give her a life that she is used to having, not something Gastby can give her.

We all love being the friend that everyone comes to with their problems. It makes us feel important and wanted that we were told such sensitive information. I personally love this feeling; knowing everything about a situation from all sides. It almost feels god-like to be an all-knowing presence in the group. Nick Carroway must have felt the same way in The Great Gatsby. Everyone confides in him, tells him every little secret, and makes him the all-knowing god of the main characters. He knows every feeling of every person and therefore knows when they lie straight through their teeth. He is the keeper of the drama and never lets on that he has been talking to the other party of the drama. This is how he keeps his reign on drama- he keeps everyone thinking that he is on their side, keeping their trust.

Nick is such an unproblematic king which is why we all love and trust him. He causes no problems and never picks a side so everyone thinks he is on theirs. This makes him such a good narrator because he relays all the information others tell him to us so we can feel like all-knowing gods just like him. We make that face when we read that someone lied about something they just told Nick about just a few pages ago, and I bet Nick does too.he makes everything more interesting for him to experience and us to read by knowing everything and seeing everything unfold dramatically.

This meme touches on a subject much as I wrote about last week. The Tom/Daisy/Gatsby love triangle is a main plot point in The Great Gatsby. This meme harps on the notion that even though Daisy is married to Tom, she still yearns for the romance that she had with Gatsby in the past. However, Daisy never does anything to end her abusive and unfaithful relationship with Tom. in my last post, I talked about how Gatsby wants to repeat the past, and this meme is saying that Daisy wants the same thing. She enjoys the rekindling romance the Gatsby gives her and reminisces about a time when they were together, without Tom in the picture. At the time we read about in the novel, Daisy has been waiting for Gatsby to come home from the war ever since he left. The only reason Daisy is not with Gatsby is that he had to leave for Europe. Despite her upper-class family’s disapproval of working-class Jay Gatsby, she had plans to run away and marry him. Once he left for the war, all those plans became irrelevant because they were an ocean apart. Daisy marries a man she learned to love but does not want. Tom does not like that Daisy still has feelings for Gatsby, however, he has his own guilty pleasures in Myrtle. Tom cheats on Daisy and has no remorse, even showing off his affair to Nick. F. Scott Fitzgerald could be making a statement on how men at the time could get away with extramarital affairs but women were shamed if they even looked at another man, and could not file for divorce on their own. Fitzgerald could have used this plot point to make a point in real life on the equality for women to choose their own love lives.

We all have things we regret or wish that we could have done better, or that some life even would have not gotten in the way of our goals. For many of us we regret something that we wish we could have done but just never did and now we all think about what could have been, whether about a test grade, a conversation with a family member, or a relationship. For many people my age, Covid has dampened major life milestones and put a hold on our relationships with peers and our families. Now that Covid is becoming more and more normal and society is going back to interacting with others in person in some sort of “normal”, we try to repeat the past and rebuild what we had before this major world event changed everything.

When Jay Gatsby was a young bachelor, he fell in love with a Louisville girl named Daisy. He planned to marry her despite her family’s disapproval. Like all good plans, however, the war got in the way. Gatsby left for Europe to fight in the war, and by the time the war ended, Daisy had moved on to a garbage excuse for a man, Tom. This threw Gatsby into a spiral trying to get her back. We’ve all felt that kind of love where we would do anything to get our love back after they’ve already moved on right? If only that damn war wouldn’t have gotten in the way maybe she’d be with me…

Gatsby wants to repeat the past and have that love that he shared with Daisy before the war ruined everything. He is so determined, triggering the very blunt “did I stutter” said by Stanley from the office, to win Daisy back and repeat the past. He loved the past, and using his newfound wealth and power, he will make it happen for his one and only love, Daisy.