My affair with Gatsby has been tumultuous, to say the least. In fact, when I first got this book, I hated it. I started reading it on a plane to Korea and halfway over the pacific ocean, I just stopped. I closed the book, I put it in my bag and didn't open it again for two years. This is not wholly uncommon. I did the same thing for Anna Karenina. Time passes, I remember that I started this book or that and out my mind towards finishing them. I usually dislike the books once I finish reading, but by golly, I finish reading them.
But then there's Gatsby. I've probably read this book five times in the past three years, each time not of my own volition. I read it it for class, usually, to get a reminder of what I'm going to be teaching the kids. And every time I read it, I'm struck by how much more I like the story this time compared to the last. It's growing on me. It's taking over my life. Well, maybe not that extreme, but close.
Today I had to defend the merits of the novel. A student, wholly unsolicited, blurted out that they really hate the book and it wasn't any good. Now, I let my students have their own opinion of the novel once they've finished it. But we had just finished chapter five. And to have a student finish the book and tell their classmates that it was horrible wasn't exactly going to encourage them to continue reading. So I explained that a more mature approach was needed to appreciate a book like Gatsby versus one like The Hunger Games.
Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed The Hunger Games. But if you're a student that likes story lines with lots of adventure, which this student admitted that they did, Gatsby may not be for you. For one thing, it takes place in such a short amount of time and everyone is so civil. Granted, they do act like animals, too, but in a genteel sort of way. And the language. This is not simple, easily accessible and quick to skim through. You can't read Gatsby cursorily. The poetic language, the foreshadowing, the imagery, the dialogue, all this contributes to a story that constantly surprises you so each successive reading. I continually find new things that Fitzgerald put in to make the story more than it appears. In fact, a different student points out a connection that I hadn't even thought of and it was fantastic. This story... Well, it's like an onion. It's got layers.
Plus, this is a love story, pure and simple. So many people dislike the novel on that account because, ugh, it's so unrealistic, Gatsby should have just moved on, Daisy wasn't that great anyway, she and Tom deserved each other, blah blah. Blah.
But this story resonates with anyone who's ever loved foolishly, without reason and past the boundaries of common sense. Someone who's loved someone who may have been undeserving, careless or selfish. But someone who cares so much that even when something terrible happens, their only thought is for that other person. Because who hasn't loved and come to some sort of grief because of it?
This story is for anyone who's ever wanted to be loved as much as Daisy was, by a man who will "dispense starlight to casual moths--so that he [can] "come over" some afternoon to a stranger's garden" in order to meet again the woman he loves. Or by a man who will look at her "in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at sometime".
This is a story for us romantics, and yes, I count myself among them.
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