Recently, my language-arts class finished reading The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The book is often cited as an American classic, and I consider it one of my favorite books of all time. This is for many reasons, most notably the story and message, which I think still resonates today.
The Great Gatsby is, without spoiling the plot, essentially about the American Dream. All of the essential elements are there. A mysterious self-made millionaire attempting to win back his long-lost love. The glamour and excesses of 1920s New York City before the Great Depression brought everything tumbling back down. All of this ties together into one of the greatest narratives ever created, with Fitzgerald making great use of descriptive language and imagery to make the words and characters come to life.
More interesting still, the story is told from the perspective of a Minnesotan. The Great Gatsby has been interpreted to have encompassed many of Fitzgerald’s life experiences. Both the author and the narrator of the story, Nick Carraway, are from the Midwest. This gives the story a great point of view, as Nick, a fish out of water in New York, evaluates the events and other characters of the story with much different values than their own. It gives us in this state our own claim to great American literature, along with the novels of Sinclair Lewis and more recently Bob Dylan, both Nobel Prize-winners for Literature.
The message of the story, constant throughout the narrative, is also notable. Gatsby, through his money and his talents, is essentially trying to turn back time. An otherwise highly intelligent man, he steadfastly refuses to believe his last five years cannot be undone. Through the narrator and audience voice of Nick, readers get to go deep into his thoughts and motivations, learning the deep reason why Gatsby thinks this way. With the symbolism involved with the message, the story is clear: We can’t change the past, we can only affect the future. Believing otherwise might just lead one to ruin.
Gatsby takes our classic American belief in being able to achieve our goals with enough work, and turns it on its head. What if even being successful beyond your wildest dreams doesn’t guarantee you happiness? It certainly doesn’t for Gatsby because what he wants is impossible to do, even with all of his wealth and influence. We can certainly see this play out in real life as well. Many people we would consider famous and living the high-life, as we see on the news everyday, turn out to be feeling just the opposite.
The real shame of this reflective work of American life was that it was initially poorly received. Fitzgerald intended to create a great work, but many in the 1920s when it was published dismissed it. World War II and further distribution carried the book to the icon it is today, too late for Fitzgerald to enjoy. He died in 1940, thinking his “Gatsby” was a failure.
Often, in today’s hustle-bustle world, we may miss something or pass up an opportunity because we think we are too busy. The story of The Great Gatsby shows this to be a dangerous assumption. Gatsby’s biggest regret involves events that were beyond his control. How much worse would it be for us to have missed something that could have made a world of difference to us?
Books can teach us many things, and even though The Great Gatsby is nearing the 100-year mark, it’s still as relevant and moving as ever. I hope we will not lose the great gift and asset of reading and the many things that can be learned and gained from it. With this book and others, I hope our increasingly digital world can continue to be affected by the magic of pen on paper.
Connor Kockler is a Sauk Rapids-Rice High School student. He enjoys writing, politics and news, among other interests.