Classics Corner: Fitzgerald delivers on our “Great” expectations

By: Michelle Anstett
Editor-in-chief

I must preface this week’s column by telling you, dear readers, that you will never again see a novel by an American author written about in this column (that is, unless I absolutely run out of things to write about or I’m just in a particularly angry, book-bashing mood one week).

Being the Anglo-Saxon snob that I am, I tend only to read literature written by authors across the pond. Sure, I’ve read Hemingway and Steinbeck and Hawthorne and Melville, but I just don’t believe what they write is any good. However, there is one exception to my “Anything American is bad” rule: F. Scott Fitzgerald.

One of the preeminent writers of the 1920s, Fitzgerald’s private life made him just as notorious as his writing did. He, his wife, Zelda, and his daughter, Scottie, were amongst the American expatriates living in Paris, and the husband and wife team regularly made headlines, once leaping into a hotel fountain after a night of carousing.

Lucky for him, though, Fitzgerald is remembered today for his writing, most notably his novel “The Great Gatsby.”

This relatively short, brilliantly-written piece is amongst my short list of all-time favorite novels.

Told through the eyes of Nick Carraway, a Midwestern native and recent transplant to New York, “The Great Gatsby” tells the story of Jay Gatsby, a mysteriously wealthy and enigmatic inhabitant of West Egg who throws lavish parties for nearly anyone he meets.
At first, Nick tries to connect the dots between Gatsby and his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, until Gatsby confides in Nick and reveals that the two were in love at one point in their pasts.

However, their romance ended when the ultimately plebian Gatsby went off to war. While he was away Daisy married Tom Buchanan, a violent, philandering former football star whose only virtue in Daisy’s mind is his wealth.

When Gatsby returned from war, he vowed to make his life right and win Daisy’s heart, thus his quick wealth gain and ostentatious spending practices.

When Daisy, while driving Gatsby’s bright yellow car, accidentally strikes and kills Myrtle, her husband’s lover, the happy equilibrium Gatsby believes he has finally reached comes crashing quickly down.

The ending, as Nick stands on the harbor and looks out on the water, is perhaps one of the most beautiful in all of modern literature: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

While most people have probably read this in a high school or college class (or, if you’re like someone I know, you’ve been stuck at the beginning of chapter six for the last year and a half), this novel is one which merits a re-read once every few years. I first encountered “The Great Gatsby” six years ago, in my sophomore English class, and have read it at least three times since, with new sections and images jumping out at me with each read-through.

One thing about Fitzgerald is that he was just as good at describing lavish parties as he was at participating in them. In chapter three, he gives a lengthy description of the preparations being executed around Gatsby’s bustling mansion in which you can almost see the colors jump off the page.

A few pages later, Fitzgerald signals the beginning of the party by saying, “Suddenly one of these gypsies in trembling opal seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and moving her hands like Frisco dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray’s understudy from the ‘Follies.’ The party has begun.”

In this beautiful description, the reader can envision the woman beginning her dance.

Whether you like pretty descriptions such as the one above or a more action-oriented book, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” has something for you.

If you read it in high school and hated it, give it another try. If you have never cracked its cover, open it up as soon as possible. It will not disappoint.