Today, I'm going to introduce you to everything I find interesting about The Great Gatsby

without massive spoilers. It's going to take a few minutes, but I'm going to go as quickly

as I can because life is fleeting... is one of the themes of The Great Gatsby.

So, right at the beginning of the second chapter of Gatsby, we get two of the great metaphors

in American literature. First: the Valley of Ashes. The narrator, Nick, writes about

this huge valley of ashes outside of Manhattan. This was real, and in 1922 there was this,

like, ever-growing depository of the burned waste of people who lived in and around New

York. And in the novel, George Wilson, this gas-station owner, lives in the Valley of

Ashes with his wife, Myrtle, with whom Tom Buchanan is having an affair.

Anyone who's even read five pages of the Great Gatsby will no doubt remember Tom Buchanan

as one of the worlds least likable people. Yeah, so right there in the Valley of Ashes

there are also the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, whose irises are like one yard high. They're

just these disembodied, unblinking eyes that see everything below them. Like, they don't

have arms to catch you or legs to chase you down; they can't punish you or kill you, but

Dr. T.J. Eckleburg's eyes see everything. But more of that in a minute.

So Tom and his mistress and her sister and Nick and this random other couple end up in

an apartment in New York, just getting drunk and utilizing servants and creating more ashes

for the valley and generally having, like, the worst time ever.

One of the crazy things about The Great Gatsby is there's always some debaucherous party

going on, and no one is ever having any fun. Like, everybody in that room just wants more

money and more class, and they wanna, like, find a way to get a better life, except for

Tom Buchanan who has what they all want except that Tom Buchanan is, like, an unbearable

ass-face. Tom Buchanan makes Paris Hilton look like charming and grounded.

And that's one of the criticisms you hear about The Great Gatsby: that no one in the

book is likable. I don't think that's fair to Gatsby, or to Nick and to a certain extent

I don't think it's fair to Daisy, but more importantly I don't know where people got

the idea that characters in books are supposed to be likable. Books are not in the business

of creating merely likable characters with whom you can have some simple identification.

Books are in the business of creating great stories that make your brain go all like ahhbdgbdmerhbergurhbudgerbudbaaarr.

Sorry, I spend all my time with a baby.

Right, so shortly after that horrible party, we go to an awesome party at Gatsby's house.

I mean, there's still a lot of stuff being created for the Valley of Ashes, but at least

Gatsby's party has Gatsby, and even though Gatsby has this incredibly annoying habit

of saying "old sport" all the time as a way of trying to sound upper-crusty, he's a pretty

charming guy: he has a smile that makes you feel that he is "irresistibly prejudiced in

your favor." To quote Nick.

But the one thing we know about Gatsby for much of the book is that no one knows anything

about him. Like, there's talk that he might be a bootlegger or a killer or own a chain

of drug stores; no one really seems to know even though everyone's at his party, drinking

his booze, running around his mansion.

I should mention that the first party at Gatsby's house also contains the greatest drunk driving

scene in the history of American literature in which a drunk guy gets in an accident like

three seconds after getting in his car, and even though the wheel has fallen off the car,

he keeps trying to drive it. And I think, at least in the novel, that had become the

American Dream by the 1920s. The dream was to, you know, have a leisurely and debaucherous

life where you had enough money to buy fancy new cars and enough whisky to crash them.

But we learn pretty quickly that Gatsby isn't like the people who go to his parties. He

hasn't acquired, like, wealth and social status so that he can enjoy them; he doesn't drink;

and, as he repeatedly points out to Nick, he's never even used his own pool. He's worked

to get this money and build this social status because he is in love with a woman who lives

across the bay, whose dock has a green light at the end of it. And that woman is Daisy

Buchanan, Tom Buchanan's wife.

Daisy and Gatsby had fallen in love years before, but then Gatsby went off to war and

she got married and now she lives across the bay and the green light and he just wants

to reach it. So he asks Nick to manufacture a reunion. All right, and at that reunion

everything is yellow. Like, Gatsby's car is yellow, and Gatsby's tie is yellow, and Daisy

Buchanan's dress buttons are yellow. At one point Nick — who's third-wheeling it big-time

at this reunion — describes the smell of flowers as "pale gold." It's not an accident.

In this very chapter Nick refers to the green light at the end of Daisy's dock that Gatsby's

always looking out at and reaching for as an "enchanted object." And that seems to be

a reasonably good definition of symbolism. Symbols are enchanted objects, and yellow

or gold is an enchanted color in this novel. But not just in this novel, but also, like,

in our lives, like "golden opportunities," or a "golden age," or "golden youth." God

knows the characters in this novel aren't the first people to ever conflate wealth and

beauty. But one of the interesting questions in The Great Gatsby is whether Gatsby really

loves Daisy or if he loves her because she's golden, you know? Because, as he once famously

says, her voice is "full of money." Gatsby hasn't come by his money honestly. He has

no class or family background. Tom Buchanan calls him, "Mr. Nobody From Nowhere." And

maybe Gatsby can never be Mr. Somebody From Somewhere, but Daisy Buchanan would certainly

help with her family connections and her legitimate money.

We see this too when the book flashes back to the Midwest, when Gatsby and Daisy first

fall in love. Is Gatsby falling in love with Daisy or with her family's mansion? But regardless,

before Daisy and Gatsby can run off into the golden sunset, there is the small matter of

her being married to Tom.

And the fascinating thing is that by the novel's climax, it's not enough to Gatsby that Daisy

loves him. He needs Daisy to say, "I never loved Tom. I only ever loved you." Because

for Gatsby, it's not enough to get Daisy back. He has to get the feeling he first had when

they fell in love back, that feeling of purity and innocence. He has to reclaim his past.

And that dream- or more specifically the foul dust that trails in the wake of it- is more

than about two characters in a novel; it is the American dream and the world's dream.

There will never be enough money and fame and love for us in this world because every

time we get what we thought we wanted, we realize that we want more because what we

really want is to go back in time to some place when we felt safe, some time before

we discovered violence and corruption, when we were happy and pure and innocent.

We want to go to the Golden Age. But for Gatsby, the relentless pursuit of that dream leads

to only more violence and corruption until there's this penultimate moment of violence

that is witnessed by the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg. And then Gatsby finally gets to

use his pool.

Hank, the last chapter of The Great Gatsby is, to me, one of the saddest passages in

American literature. It shows how muddied innocence and guilt are, and it shows the

vast and intractable unfairness of the society that was supposedly founded on equality.

At one point Nick recalls people who would go to those great parties and sneer most bitterly

at Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby's liquor. Let me submit to you that those of us who

would sneer at Gatsby do so on the courage of his liquor because we all share his ambition.

We all believe in that green light that has long eluded us, that if we can only, "run

faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . .And then one fine morning--" And still the foul

dust trails in the wake of those dreams.

Hank, I have two non-rhetorical questions for you today which we must discuss here in

comments because Your Pants have been hacked: First, to what extent do you think Gatsby

is a hero? I mean I know he's the titular character of the novel, but to what extent

do you think that his quest is heroic? And secondly, is your quest heroic?

Hank, I'll see you on Friday.