Exercise in Lockdown

The Great Gatsby is a book I find to be quite enigmatic. On one hand, it is a story of Jay Gatsby pursuing a lost love, motivated only by his heart and by the purity of his love. On the other hand, the story repeatedly shows the inability for Gatsby to bridge that gap–that barrier between him and the aristocracy; the barrier between him and Daisy. It raises moral questions about the purity of love–the fact that Gatsby is pursuing a married woman, the fact that Tom is cheating on his wife constantly. Is it about the corrupting influence of capitalism and consumerism? Is it about human ideals, and that in pursuing them we are fated to fail every time?

Personally, I would say that the books lies more on the cynical side. Gatsby’s motivations are initially presented as pure, yet his mannerisms are often manipulative and detached. When he tries to recreate that love that he once had with Daisy, he is punished by that “foul dust in the wake of his dreams”. I suppose it is a story about ideals, a statement about Gatsby’s hopeless romanticism. It’s a story of how we can’t reclaim what is lost with time, and that our desires often stand in the way of our own morals.

In The Great Gatsby, it is never quite clear what the moral choice is.