The Great Gatsby

Despite it's flowery language and menagerie of fantastical characters and settings, Gatsby is an extremely relatable book. The great titular man and the people around him can easily be compared to teenagers, Americans, and humanity in general today.

Wow, don't I sound ready to write a crappy AP test essay.

But seriously, this book is so cool for the way it shows people trying to achieve their dreams. The two main groups of people are shown with Gatsby on one side and Daisy and Tom on the other. Gatsby seems to have a nobler dream, that of obtaining Daisy at last, than the Buchanans, who are happy with their riches and gilded relationship. However, Gatsby dies having spent years throwing parties in hopes she would come in a house he bought to be near her and believing that she would leave Tom once they were reunited in vain. Daisy and Tom don't seem to love each other, living in a tolerable coexistence, tdisappearing out of the blue. Yet they are the ones who live. Gatsby dies with nothing, having sought after a love that he believed to be attainable, but had been lost since he left for the war.

People say that those who seek after riches are silly and shallow. But is holding on to an unachievable, albeit "noble", dream just as silly? What if someone is determined to go to a certain college and they apply year after year only to be rejected every time and never go anywhere else in the meantime? Or if an adult decides they want to be part of the US Olympic gymnastics team and begins to train for the first time in their mid twenties? No matter how dedicated they are to practicing, it's impossible to have the level of experience needed for such a position. No matter how much Gatsby or I or countless others love someone from our past, that does not guarantee that they will return our undying affection. We should never give up on all other possibilities because of our devotion to a lost cause, and yet we can't seem to escape the green light at the end of the dock.

And then there's Nick. I think many of us feel like Nick, floating around in hopes of finding a good job or true love or a cheap house. We know what we want, eventually, but put little effort into actually obtaining anything in the present. And then, we end up laying on the beach at night and wanting to return home as we become fed up with all the phonies and injustice around us. We see ourselves as above the monotonous crowds of people we encounter daily, while we ignore the fact that we cared little about the Jordan Bakers in our lives and become angry and in love when they leave. We are lost, and we wander around searching for a landmark that erodes away from neglect once we find it.

Perhaps that's what makes it such an enduring book. We can read about fictional characters in a time period we'll never experience and still feel so connected because we see ourselves buried in between the pages. The prose is gorgeous and inspiring, but I can especially appreciate a book that makes me look not only at the printed ink and paper, but also at myself.