The Great Gatsby Pgs. 167-180

          Having read the conclusion of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, I now feel that I need to retract every harsh judgment that I made of Jay Gatsby; while I may not agree with or condone all of his actions and decisions, I now know with a firm resolution that he was a genuinely good man with admirable ambitions for his life. After Nick talks at length with Mr. Gatz, many very personal aspects of “Jimmy” are revealed that Gatsby never would have revealed about himself in a million years; however, these insights into Gatsby’s true character reveal how honorable of a man he truly was. For example, the fact that Gatsby created a daily schedule and list of “general resolves” for himself as a young boy which included studying needed inventions and being better to his parents shows how pure his heart and intentions were. Gatsby never harbored a desire to be the most famous, wealthy, or superior figure in any aspect of life, as I may have falsely assumed; rather, he merely felt that he was destined to live a life with higher prospects with those of his parents, and he did everything in his power from a young age to achieve this. Throughout his entire life, Gatsby overcame numerous adversities to accomplish these goals, so the fact that he died lonely and with no one in his life that even cared so much as to show up at his funeral other than Nick and his own father truly breaks my heart. His one fatal flaw lied in the fact that he dwelled too much in the past and wasted precious time in his short life chasing after a fantasy that had surpassed him years before. Despite this, while I may never understand why Gatsby loved a woman as vile and abominable as Daisy so passionately, I still do not believe that he deserved his ultimate fate as punishment for this flaw. Gatsby was a man worthy of more love, friendship, and respect than he ever received, and the fact that his existence was reduced to hosting weekly parties for petty people who fabricated atrocious rumors about him speaks very horrendously of mankind.

I also think it is important to mention that, since the first page of the novel, I have worked with tremendous effort to analyze the very complex characters of the story (since Fitzgerald employed a great deal of indirect characterization rather than direct characterization like Wharton did, this was much more difficult than it was in The House of Mirth)! I knew from a point in the novel very early on that I did not like Tom or Daisy Buchanan at all, but I always struggled throughout the book to articulate an exact description of their characters- that is, until Nick described them perfectly when he concluded, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…” (Fitzgerald, 179). After reading this analysis from Nick, I now have come to the understanding that a total disregard for everyone else’s feelings was the specific attribute of Tom, Daisy, and the public in general that irritated me so profoundly. Perhaps this specific quality is what distinguished Gatsby from the rest: while everyone else never cared enough, Gatsby cared for others (specifically Daisy) a little too much.

Nobody bothered to attend Gatsby's funeral except

Nick, Mr. Gatz, and a hodgepodge of servants.

Seeing how poor Gatsby was treated after his death made me really stop to consider the nature of mankind and reevaluate my opinion of the book. Originally, my opinion was that, while I genuinely enjoyed reading the book and found the plotline to be incredibly interesting, I was too annoyed and angry with the selfishness and stupidity of all the characters to really take pleasure in reading the book or desire a happy ending for any of them (except Nick, the one character that I always loved).However, after the death of Gatsby and the fact that nobody took the time of day to pay their respects at his funeral, I was just so downright depressed, sad, and heartbroken for Gatsby that I was forced to stop and really contemplate the nature of the human race. When I read a story such as The Great Gatsby, in which virtually every character other than Nick ends up being cruel, selfish, vicious, vindictive, heartless, mean-spirited, deranged, psychotic, or self-absorbed, I feel as though I have lost all faith in mankind. Normally I’m the kind of person who likes to read “Chicken Soup for the Soul” kind of stories, so reading two books in a row this summer that were massively depressing was not really my favorite thing to do, to say the least. However, reading both of these novels, particularly The Great Gatsby, really made me think about society and its pitfalls and certainly inspired me to be a better person- not only because I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I behaved as all of the characters in The Great Gatsby did, but also simply just to compensate for all the Tom and Daisy Buchanans of the twenty-first century. Even if the book didn’t warm my heart, Fitzgerald was certainly tremendously effective in forcing me to contemplate the tendencies of human beings and take a better look into the complex workings of the human heart and mind. With the intense pondering that this novel inspires, I can clearly see why The Great Gatsby is such a renowned installment of American literature, so ultimately I am very glad that I was made to read this book, and I have walked away from this novel with a very positive opinion of it.