OntheThemesofTheGreatGatsby.doc

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On the Themes of The Great Gatsby
I．Introduction
In 1922 during the jazz age, F. Scott Fitzgerald brings forth an extra ordinary tale of love. Fitzgerald was made to write a smooth and entertaining novel such as, The Great Gatsby, which became a classic of the twentieth century literature. F. Scott Fitzgerald carefully selects his characters' words as he describes the astounding and fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his strong, innocent intentions as he strives to exalt his love to the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. The Great Gatsby is a tragedy amongst the wealthy and the poor. It is irresistibly melancholy but funny, while light but sensible from beginning to the end.
The story depicts Gatsby's obsession with his one true love, Daisy, whether he was right or wrong to love her, his love for her robs life of all its meaning and purpose. Fitzgerald writes a phenomenal novel that can be called a masterpiece without a doubt. His choice of words is very articulate and the description he embodies in every sentence is pleasurable for all readers. Fitzgerald helps the reader to become a part of the novel and connect with the characters. He writes to make his readers be aware of their imaginations, while making them picture the narration perfectly down to the very last detail. Fitzgerald creates fictional characters, such as Gatsby that one can fascinate to and enjoy reading about. The book is so dramatic and entertaining that it's easy to miss the fact that it's beautifully written.
II．Be Careful What You Aspire to
The Great Gatsby gives a new thrill of a Shakespearean story "Romeo and Juliet," with a sensational twist at the end. It proves that not every love story ends beautifully, or the way the main character would like it to, which makes Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby an even more sophisticated and like no other. This story is not like your average "love story", it gives away more than you expect. And that clearly shows how an author develops his master piece as he progresses with his writing.
Apart from love stuffs, for many people the basic theme of The Great Gatsby is “Be careful what you wish for.” I think at a simple level of analysis this is true. At a deeper level I would refine that theme into this “Be careful what you aspire to.” This novel is a great cautionary meditation on the American Dream and its less pleasant possibilities. In positive form, the American Dream is that you can be more than you started with. That explains in part why this book is often required for those American younger readers in college who are taking their first real steps toward realizing their own American Dream. Fitzgerald offers Gatsby as a caution to people who think that aspiration past our beginnings is a good thing, a desirable thing, and the point of ambition. Everyone in this novel aspires to be more than they seem to be or who they are. Everyone in this novel suffers loss, failure, or disaster. No one in this novel leaves with any awareness of why they failed. Yet most of the characters can be described as either great challengers to the American Dream or else already living the American Dream. How is it possible for such failure to occur?
As far as I see, the answer is found in the last sentence of the novel.
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Aspiration moves "against the current."
Ambition motivates us not to a positive manifestation of the Dream, with the Dream as the Vision or Goal of one's life, but rather ambition motivates us to a negative manifestation of the dream, with dream as fantasy or psychosis or unreality. And for those of us who aspire, we will find ourselves "borne back ceaselessly into the past" a modern Sisyphus doomed to push the stone uphill to the crest only to see it roll down to the valley every time.
That is a soul-chilling thought. Isn't this kind of ambition a good thing? Don't all good parents aspire for their children to aspire? Doesn't it all fall down if we don't aspire? It is not that anyone in the novel aspires badly or stupidly or illegally, but rather that they aspire at all is the root and branch of their failure. Here, The Great Gatsby argues that it is ambition itself that will cause people to fail and worse still to fail without insight and repair, for as long as you continue to aspiring you will continue to fail.
III．Conclusion
This is an interesting and heuristic interpretation. First, it breaks free of the simple and obvious surface appearances and misdirects that divert some readers: It's the 1920s and irrelevant; it's about a bunch of spoiled white folks; it's about the vita loca. Clearly, there's a lot more going on here and it requires careful, thoughtful reading and reflection. Second, it explains why Gatsby is still appealing to so many people even after 80 years. It turns out that we are still living in a Modern age and the current postmodern foolishness is explained by the past: Gatsby, Tom, Daisy and Nick would call themselves Postmodern today. The American Dream here is the defining element of Modernism and the fact that we're still aspiring the same old way like Jay Gatsby connects with us at a deep level. Third, it reinforces the perceived greatness of the novel that many readers see and continue to see. This is not only a well written, well structured, pretty novel, it also addresses eternal human nature and the repetitive futility we experience in life. Gatsby is dramatic philosophy, a better written Platonic dialog.

Bibliography
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