Month: April 2022

This meme reminds me of the TikTok audio that goes like, “Oh, we’re in a different tax bracket”. It is used to poke fun at people who are unnecessarily flaunting their wealth and riches by directly comparing them to normal people that are trying to get by. This in turn reminds me of how Daisy could never be with Gatbsy because “rich girls never marry poor boys”. Even when Gatsby becomes rich after the war and they are likely in the same tax bracket, she still does not want him because he is still in her heart a “poor boy”. After World War I, the struggle between old money and new money became much more prominent than it ever had in the past. Old money folks took pride in the family money and the reputation that came with it. New money folks had to keep on proving that they belonged in the rich community, they had the money after all. Even though almost everyone we meet in TGG is rich, there still seems to be a struggle of rich versus poor. There are the old money Buchanans and new money Gatsby. Both are insav=nely rich, but only the Buchanans are fully respected members of society, while Gatsby hides who he really is. Only the people we meet though icka and the reader knows who Gatsby really is. To everyone else, he is a personality not a real person. He is in a different tax bracket from them, in money and in reality. He is a figment of the imagination of the public. 

After watching the 2013 adaptation of The Great Gatsby this weekend, I can’t get over how Leonardo DiCaprio says “old sport”. He says it so often and with a distinctive accent I can only describe with the word “posh”. He says it like he has money and is an old man retired to his mansion after his wife died from tuberculosis many moons ago. It has the same energy as when a distant father is congratulating his son on doing something outstanding by saying “champ” or something like that. He says it so often you get used to it by the end of the movie, but the first few times it really sticks out when he says “old sport” like we are supposed to know what it means right away. The phrase seems to catch other characters, especially Nick, off guard at first. It is one of the first things Gatsby says to Nick when they meet at one of the parties.

Those who have read the book know that Gatsby says “old sport” as an homage to Dan Cody, the man who practically raised him and taught him how to survive in the world. However, Dan Cody was far from “posh” so it makes little sense to me that an homage to a poor man would be so fancy. Maybe it is because Dan Cody gave Gatsby the figurative tools to become “posh” himself and Gatsby is using this tone to say something like “I did it” and to still give credit to the man that made it happen in the first place. 

There has been great speculation that Nick desired to have a homosexual relationship with Gatsby. This meme seems to play off of that joke, with Nick being unhappy that Gatsby would rather have no relationship than one with someone other than Daisy. I personally never saw this when reading the novel myself, but I can see how others find this theory to be true. Nick has almost no female love interests. He has something with Jordan Baker, but that goes nowhere. I always thought that it was because she was a modern woman and mildly problematic, and Nick did not want to be involved in her side of the drama she caused. However, just because a male character does not have any female love interests, that does not automatically make them interested in men. When reading the novel, I did pick up on an unusual obsession that Nick had for Gatsby, but I never associated it with anything sexual.

For a relatable perspective: almost everyone has fallen in love, and when it ended, you could never imagine yourself or the other person in a relationship with anyone else. That is one of the worst feelings in the world, especially when you see them with a new person and you have no one. Daisy and Gatsby were in love, about to run away with each other, then life got in the way. They had to split paths, and she ended up with a new guy and Gatsby was all alone. He can’t imagine being in love with anyone but Daisy and has no intention in doing so anytime soon.

Everyone loves a good party. I personally love ending my week hanging out with my friends. It gives me something to look forward to especially if I have a lot of work to do on a particular week. It doesn’t have to be much. I don’t need a rager or anything illegal; just a fun time with my friends. Some of the best parties are the ones with no plan and with the people you haven’t seen in a long time and with whom you need to catch up on the time you were apart. I love having no agenda and just being able to have fun and catch up with old friends that I haven’t seen in a while.

After Gatsby made his wealth, he hosted a party almost every night. If I had no responsibilities I would be so down for that! People came to his parties to say that they were there and meet important people and maybe run into someone they haven’t seen in a hot minute. Gatsby himself had his own agenda. He wanted to find his long-lost love that he knew lived in the same city to which he recently moved. He was rarely seen at his own parties, lurking from above looking for Daisy. Eventually, he finds her after countless parties and then uses her cousin Nick to get to her. Gatsby was very clever to use his neighbor, Nick, who had more recently moved there because Nick would not know of his intentions and she would trust Nick. nobody got hurt at the parties , but the aftermath was not bloodless.