The Great Gatsby

"He smiled understandingly - much more than 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 love.  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 so 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."

As I have said before, I am a sucker for the sad kind of love story that never quite works out in the end. Reading The Great Gatsby again indulged me not only in the tragedy and passion of the novel, but also of the novel’s author. There is something to be said for having everything you want – all your life’s happiness – just out of reach. (Or, in the case of the Fitzgeralds, having it all and watching it fall apart knowing you are powerless to fix it...I’ll get into them later). This may or may not reflect on me personally…that’s something to look into…



I am not at all interested in discussing or defending Gatsby as The Great American Novel. For my part, I have never been presented with an adequate rival, so my opinion appears to remain as of yet unchallenged. But I welcome submissions. And I’m not going to go into a whole plot description because everyone should have already read this book. And if you haven’t, DO IT! Seriously. I think instead I want to focus on the biggest difference I noticed in my reading of Gatsby this time around.


In learning to approach and digest literature, I often had (and still do) a hard time with narrators. This is particularly problematic when entire novels are in the third person because I have no idea who is telling me the story. While not the case with Gatsby, I recognized a whole new scope of narrative issues in my recent reading. From the outset, Nick Carraway appears to me a rare literary find: a narrator we can trust. Nick is merely an observer; several times throughout the story he is literally just along for the ride. Nick’s actions are of little consequence to the others. Even when it falls to Nick alone to plan and execute Gatsby’s funeral, no one attends. I think this speaks both to Gatsby’s hollow popularity and to Nick’s virtual invisibility to the other characters. It kind of sucks to be Nick, but it always seemed to me that it was a pretty lucky break for us. We as the reader get a virtually unbiased account of the events of the story. Sure Nick is related to Daisy and spends a lot of time with Gatsby, but he doesn’t like any of these people. He’s a reliable witness. Maybe.


This time through I noticed some glaring problems in the timeline. There are huge chronological issues that the reader is forced to sort through. Nick is telling the story in an extended flashback, but it is not clear how long ago this all happened. Everything is supposed to occur over 3 months, but more events than possible are crammed into one month. Does this point to the unreliability of Nick as story-teller or the flaw of Fitzgerald as story-writer? There are also a number of incorrect geographical references. Is Nick remembering incorrectly? Is Gatsby being vague about his past? Is Fitzgerald being inaccurate in his writing? I don’t know the answers to any of these. If this is truly the Great American Novel, then we have to assume that all inconsistencies, chronological or otherwise, are intentional and meant to add somehow to the novel. And if they are unintentional, does that affect how we see The Great Gatsby?


I’m not entirely sure if I care. My love affair with Fitzgerald's language hasn't (and probably will never) changed. The way he describes Daisy just makes me smile…

“I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth – but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered ‘Listen,’ a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.”