WHOops! Forgot to turn off the Caps Lock after the title...silly me...
Anyway, Hello! And Welcome to The Snowball Effect! I've been gone for a while, due to "holiday" and other sundry things, such as being rather comatose for the past few days from my wisdom teeth being removed, so all the material you guys would get would mostly be in the form of "ahhh, ah ahh aah, huh nuh nuh, ahw". Which I'm sure no one wants to hear.
Anywhoosles, I figured today I'd do a little book review, since I spent a good part of my holiday reading. A couple of the books I read while on holiday were The Grapes of Wrath, All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Great Gatsby. I read Grapes of Wrath and the Western Front because they were summer reading, but I read The Great Gatsby because, well, because a friend of mine whose opinion I value very much said she hated it, and I wanted to see if I could figure out why she hated it. I'm not sure why she hates it so much, but I think I'll do my own little review over Fitzgerald's work--
Hold it! My Easy Listening playlist just switched to my favorite song! SPIN DOCTORS!! WOOOOOOO!!!!
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| (Watch while listening to Jimmy Olsen's Blues by the Spin Doctors from the link above to get the full effect. ;) |
Okay, back to the book review, self...
Great Gatsby. Okay. So.
As far as plot goes, the sequence of events is a confusing myriad of--FIGHT FI-YAH! WITH FI-YAH!
Sorry, I'll turn that off...
As far as plot goes, the sequence of events is a confusing myriad of coincidences and mishaps that is almost as bland and brainless as that of Glee and other such "reality" shows. In my case, I had to restrain myself from shouting profanities at the various vacuous characters who wander aimlessly through their suburban lives only concerned with fulfilling their base desires for late night companionship and a good shot of bourbon. It is such inconceivable lack of foresight that leads most of the characters to some pretty sad points in their lives. I found myself groaning every time Gatsby and Daisy met, knowing that nothing good could come of it, but also knowing that Gatsby was too thickheaded to see that.
Also, there is no clear distinction between good and bad, a quality that is refreshing after reading so many novels where such a distinction is the main point of the story, and where the author goes so far as to provide two easily distinguishable forces (such as orcs, for bad, and humans for good, for example, a dichotomy that I never understood, as a matter of fact--why isn't there a book about a clan of kindly orcs that are conservationalists or something, and they have to fight back to keep their...swamp pits, or whatever, from the greedy humans? Food for thought...or maybe it's just the paint fumes wafting up from the basement getting the better of me. back to the review) that meet in an epic struggle. In The Great Gatsby, there's no clear protagonist or antagonist--actually, now that I think about it, pretty much everybody in that book is an antagonist to someone, but there's no real protagonist. To put it another way, there's a lot of Darth Vaders in The Great Gatsby--but wait, I can't think of anybody who's actually evil in that book. Okay, there's a lot of Sandman's in The Great Gatsby--people who's manner of living is dying slowly--but there's no Spiderman to set 'em right.
And you know what? I kinda like that.
Because you see, that's a pretty accurate portrayal of the way we are as humans. It's what riches and good times does to our brains--we begin to forget about the future, our brain cells start getting out of shape, and our logic just goes down the drain. It's what this new generation of Christians is starting to call "going through the motions"--forgetting that there's a reason for it all, or in the case of The Great Gatsby, not having a reason to begin with.
You see, when we're in extreme poverty, where we have a major lack of something we actually need to not die, we go into a persona that I like to call "The Analyst". It's the little guy in your brain that keeps tabs on everything you do and runs risk-benefit analyses taking temporary control. Kind of like Senator Palpatine taking temporary control of the Republic, except, of course, very few people turn into psychological personifications of the Galactic Empire, which would be quite the interesting psychosis, might I add. As The Analyst, we become incredibly concerned and devoted to getting the one thing we need to survive (e.g., food).
What's that? Okay...fine. The cynical part of me would like to point out that the root word of analytic (in the sense of personalities) is anal (also referring to personality). I know, I'm a sick person. Deal with it. :)
Anyway, The Analyst is concerned about getting, for example, food to survive. But people who are accustomed to good times, such as the 20's, go into a more relaxed mode. This is the middle-class American psychosis--all the basic needs can be met with minimal effort, leaving more time for relaxation and recreation. Once our survival is assured, we tend to stop thinking too deeply about our day-to-day decisions, which can become dangerous. In The Great Gatsby, it leads to two ruined relationships, two dead lovers (though each others), and an empty, quiet house and lawn, where drained bottles of cheap wine and the burned-out stubs of cigarettes and cigars are all that's left of that wonderful, fleeting era of fast living and slow dancing, of cheesy jokes and sultry smiles, and of a thin layer of metaphorical cellophane separating it all from the real world, where Fate smiles cruelly on the rich and poor alike.
To summarize: My opinion is that The Great Gatsby clearly represents through the characters' nearsightedness and lack of morals the affect of good times on the human psyche, and the consequences of such.
That's my two bits on The Great Gatsby for you. Like it if you do, disagree if you don't, but above all remember this--WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE! IT WAS ALWAYS BURNIN' SINCE THE WORLD'S BEEN TURNIN'!
....oh, Billy Joel...you put everything so well.
Until next time,
--CommanderSnowball
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