F.
Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is
becoming rapidly more compelling as we finally begin to chisel away at
the great mystery of the identity of Gatsby himself. I have been restless since
the first few pages of the novel to learn about Gatsby, and now that Nick
Carraway has finally been invited to one of his weekend festivities, we are
allowed a little more insight into his life, although the amount of mysteries
surrounding his character still greatly outnumbers the amount of tidbits we
have ascertained about him. I found it very interesting to learn in this
chapter that a majority of the people who attend Gatsby’s parties are not even
invited, but merely show up. Furthermore, I was even more surprised to learn
that Gatsby seems to rarely make appearances at his own parties. These facts
make me question his motives in hosting exorbitantly elaborate parties every
weekend for people he does not even know while not even bothering to mingle or
talk to many of the guests. Considering that he has allowed numerous
far-fetched and horrible rumors to swirl around his name in conversation
without ever confronting them, he certainly does not strike me as the kind of
person who lives for their reputation and status in society; why then would he
bother to host such parties every weekend? I wonder if he does this simply
because he is lonely, and besides, it appears that he has no one else to spend
his great wealth on other than himself; nevertheless, I have to admit that I
really have no idea what any of his motives are nor do I know hardly anything
about him. However, I was pleased to discover through his brief conversation
with Nick Carraway that he did in fact serve in the American Army in World War
I, since some of the rumors Nick had heard thus far claimed that he was related
to Kaiser Wilhelm and was a German spy during the war. I am truly glad that
Gatsby has invited Nick to join him on his new hydroplane one day, because I am
anxious to learn more and more about his ever-elusive and incredibly mysterious
character.
At the
point in this section of The Great Gatsby
where Nick and Jordan are searching for Gatsby and happen to encounter a
drunken man in Gatsby’s library, I found the man’s insistence on the
genuineness of Gatsby’s collection of books to be symbolic of Gatsby’s
character himself. In the brief conversation that this drunken man holds with
Nick and Jordan, he continually insists that the books in the library are real
when he remarks, “I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact,
they’re absolutely real” (Fitzgerald, 45). In a similar manner, I believe that
many people assume that Gatsby is fake, or “a nice durable cardboard,” so to speak.
Since the public knows so little about his life, work, origins, or personality,
people have fabricated numerous rumors, and I think that people just assume
that he has gone to such great lengths to protect his identity because he must
have something to hide—he must be a fake. Ultimately, however, I think Gatsby
is a genuine man who, for whatever reason, has just simply chosen a more
private and isolated lifestyle. Nick Carraway noticed within a few minutes of
meeting him something that nobody else who had ever attended one of his many
parties had bothered to see: that in something as simple as a look, Jay Gatsby
could convey an overwhelmingly peaceful sense of understanding. So many people
in high society really are fake, so I think that the public expected no
less of Gatsby; however, I truly believe that he will be one of the few
exceptions to this concept. If people actually took the time to know Gatsby the
way that the drunken man in the library took the time to study his books, they
too may be surprised to learn that nothing about him is fake—it is genuinely
real. Regardless of all the rumors surrounding him, I agree completely with
Jordan Baker when she states, “He’s just a man named Gatsby” (Fitzgerald, 48).
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