gatsbying around the american dream

4:07 PM

Besides having the stupidest first name, Fitzgerald and his slicked hair are the finest relics of bygone modernism. He romanced a lot of liquor, he died young. Posthumously, his Great Gatsby became considered an American classic because it says things that I wouldn't mind getting tattooed.

Fitzgerald closes his commentary on the American Dream with incomparable eloquence: "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but no matter. Tomorrow we will run faster, reach out our arms farther. And one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

The green light that Gatsby watches boyishly loops him into his own frustrated death. But why should that be an indication that the American dream is dead? All the American dream, or any dream, is pursuit of the uneasily attainable. Happiness makes a person boring, so endlessly, dissatisfaction maintains interest by wheeling us into a panorama of people embarrassingly better. Gatsby could have married Daisy, and ignored lifelong the green light, but that's no story too worthy of reading. He could have waltzed into a completed American dream, but that wouldn't be an accurate representation of anybody. Economics and crimes sabotage a lot of things, but that preference for something that coincidentally is never the present is enough substance to keep the dream noticeable and uncrippled.

Often, what people want is someone's attention. They want to be promoted, they want to be told they have nice eyes, they want to be loved, so they work faster, look more people in the eye, become lovable. And in other times, larger houses are sought; fame becomes an obsession. That kind of wishful thinking exactly characterizes the American dream, and it's an unavoidable part of life, so there's that dream, undying.

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