It is a given that life is going to end in death. There is
no other conclusion, no other end, no other answer possible to the eternal
question of life but death. It takes magnificent madness or immense intelligence
to invent happiness into an otherwise bleak undertaking, which invariably ends
in dying. We are therefore so charmed by the stories which restore our faith in
this ever-so doomed journey of life. The Great Gatsby is a mix of both- the
madness and the intelligence.
This is a rare book which doesn’t need a review but which
one cannot stop analyzing and raving about. It is such an amazing work that one
doesn’t even want to credit the writer about it. Such brilliant art is nothing
if not an accident of nature. The writer is a mere conduit of an idea whose
time has come. But then, that is very unjust to F. Scott Fitzgerald. The writer
stands in stark contrast to his compatriot and sometimes friend Ernest
Hemingway. While Hemingway had a stark writing where every word made space for
itself only after surviving serious scrutiny of the pen keen to strike it off
unless it justified its existence, here the words rise, float and dance and the
sheer beauty of it is the justification of those words. Fitzgerald is an author in love with words.
The writing is exquisite, poetic
and ethereal. It is a book every writer ought to read. Though there is an
important point, especially for writers. One ought to read it with a serious
mind and a strong wall built around your sensitivity. Like “The Heart of
Darkness” or “Lord Jim” of Joseph Conrad, this is a book which will leave you feeling
weak and inadequate. At least that is the way I felt. I felt overwhelmed,
gasping for my breath in an monstrously over-powering poetic beauty of the brilliant prose.
Probably that is why I invented solace in the assumption that such great work
can only be an accidental creation.
The book looks at the world
around and the love which is impossibly real from the eyes of the narrator,
Nick Carraway. Nick is a young aspiring author and currently, a bond salesman.
He lives next-door to Jay Gatsby, the hero of the story. I dare not call him
anything but the Hero. He is a hero for the hopelessness of his situation and
his undying optimism. “Main protagonist” is too feeble, too timid a name for
such a man. Nick is a Yale graduate and lives in a small rented cottage next to
the large house of mysterious Jay Gatsby with unknown antecedents. Nick is
amused by the lavish parties his next door, which served their own purpose.
Mostly we believe parties are thrown so as to get like-minded or at least
familiar people together for some time of fun and frolic. In Gatsby’s parties
which quickly became the news of West Egg, were largely meant for unknown
people, thrown for unknown reasons. Nick watches those parties from the
sidelines, amused and pleased at such extravagant congregation of people coming
in like “moth to the fire”. Nick is a great observer and a greater interpreter. He is a good, moral boy, without hang-ups- a
disenchanted, but amused audience, providing an outsider’s perspective. He
visits his cousin Daisy Fay Buchanan at the beginning at their house in East
Egg. They represent a rich and elite class, immersed in the absolute decadence
of affluence. Daisy is married to Nick’s friend, Tom Buchanan. Tom is a brute
of the man, lost in his foolish self-pride, pride of class, pride of race. He
tries to live in an image of moral uprightness with an intensity that he almost
appears to believe in his moral superiority. Scott through Nick creates such a
beauty with never-hear before descriptions when he meets Jordan Baker at Tom’s
place, a cynical Golf Player, an acquaintance of Gatsby’s parties in the land
of new money, The West Egg who eventually becomes some kind of mild sweetheart
to Nick. Where else would you read a phrase like “-Then the glow faded, each
light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street
at the dusk”?
The author keeps Jay Gatsby to
himself, a loosely kept secret through the first chapter, during which he keeps
jumping in an out of conversation, appearing as a shadow, a mysterious figure,
perhaps an apparition, in the end of first chapter. Author plays with your anxious desire to meet and know this man.
The second chapter establishes that the high morality
preached by Tom is nothing but a pretense as he takes Nick to introduce him to his already married
mistress, Mrs Myrtle Wilson as they steal romance behind the back of
unsuspecting car mechanic, Mr. Wilson. The enigmatic figure of Jay Gatsby keeps
lurking in the back as readers long to see Gatsby, to meet him, to know him.
Nick gets invited to one of the Gatsby’s party . Nick, with the air of amused
outsider attends the party, wondering how he got invited in the first place and
then finds himself completely out of place in unashamedly epicurean environment
of the grand lawns of Gatsby’s. It is in
this party that Jay appears with his friendly smile and iconic “old sport”. Nick finds a friend in Gatsby’s smile which
he describes so sweetly as “He smiled understandingly. It was one of those rare
smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across
four or five times in life. It faced- or seemed to face- the whole external
world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice
in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood,
believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that
it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”
I have never before read anything so well, so painstakingly well written about
something as ephemeral, as fragile, as ordinary as a smile.
We all have been smiled at like that by a friend at one time or the
other, but coming to explain it, to tie it up in words- well, it takes a genius
to write it down like that.
Coming out of the party, Nick struggles through various
rumors about the man from nowhere. Some claim him to be bootlegger, while some
rumors suggested him to be of old money. Jay also follows the old money claim
with dead parents. Slowly the story unwinds to narrate a haunting tale of
unrequited love, the love which drove Gatsby as single force of hope and life
itself- the love for Daisy. We slowly realize the grand drama stitched by Jay,
buying a house next to Nick’s, knowing him to be Daisy’s cousin, getting Jordan
to attend his parties so as to eventually reach out to his love, Daisy, now a
married woman. He enchanted like a
helpless moth being drawn to light, keeps looking at the house on the East Egg,
the old-timer’s den, the elitist heaven on the other side of the bay and
eventually is found to be helpless and eager victim of the web he built. He
takes help of Nick, befriending him to meet Daisy. He tries to write off his
past, poverty stricken love story and tries the resurrects the lost love, with
his new found riches. Annoyed with the adultery of Tom, Nick plays a willing
associate till the time things get too hot and the news travels to Tom. Tom,
unmindful of his own dalliance, is upset and gets into verbal dual with Jay. Confronted
with choices which Daisy never wanted to make, she heads out with Jay, in fury
and their car meets an accident which kills, Mrs Myrtle. The woman eventually
goes back to her husband, her riches, who not only protects her as a chance to
regain the lost love, conspires with Mr. Wilson and puts the blame on Gatsby. Wilson,
angered by the death of his wife, unknown to her being unfaithful, takes the
bait and shoots Gatsby. The past hangs forlorn and the future dies there as
Gatsby’s body lay floating in the pool. All his mechanization, his longing, his
love, thereby comes to a naught. Reading this came to my mind that quote from
CP Surendran’s poem-“ There is no grief that death can not address.”
The bitterness of Nick
against the affluent decadence of Jazz generation, people like Tom and
Daisy, who “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into money”
which seems as true today as it was then gives way to eternal and incorrigible hope
of Gatsby. Young Nick sits and broods
over the green light on the other end of the bay, in the affluent, happy East
Egg house of Tom and Daisy Buchanan as he remembers “Gatsby believed in the green
light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us
then, but that’s no matter- to-morrow we will run faster, stretch our arms
further..and one fine morning---“. It speaks
volumes about the finesse of the writer that such as sad story, feels so damn
uplifting and hopeful as I close the book. I close my eyes, whispering to
myself- “One fine morning---“ and a green light appears in front of the closed
eyes and someone whispers in my ears with a familiarity and love which I haven’t
encountered for many years, “Old sport.”
This is not a book review, this is a tribute, a reverence.
This is to share with all lovers of literature not to miss this great book.
This is a book if not read isn’t a loss to the writer, it is rather a loss to
the reader.
Fact File:
Published: 1925
Cover: Francis Cugat
Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons
Rating: Grand, Great, Must-read
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