The Great Gatsby - Reflections

Ye Ji Park

March 27 2012

Reflective Essay: The Great Gatsby and the Yieldless Yeji

These days, I’ve begun to recite a new motto: “I want to go to university!” Becoming a sophomore, the issue of choosing a university and performing as best I can to be accepted there has turned into a serious task. My advisor teacher no longer comforts me by telling “You’re freshman. This is a period for school adjustment. Don’t be too nervous over AP exams or extracurricular activities.” Instead, he admonishes, “Now you’re a junior. Prepare GPA, SAT, AP, and don’t forget volunteer or club activities. Oh, and try to do something continuously, to show the admission officers that you focused on one field steadily.” Realizing that not much time is left for me before submitting a common application, my dream has suddenly become to receive an acceptance letter from a university. Ever since this dream settled in my mind, I occasionally speak to myself, “I want to go to university!”, at random moments – when I ruin my calculus quiz, doze during the self-study period, or spend thirty minutes meaninglessly Facebooking.

Last weekend, I read The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which is regarded as “a classic, perhaps the supreme American novel” (John Carey, Sunday Times). After reading the book in one sitting, I became a complete advocate of John Carey; the book truly deserves such praise. The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, discusses a lost generation after World War I and the American Dream through Gatsby’s tragic pursuit of Daisy, the symbol of a corrupt American society. The book’s clout, however, does not end up being restricted to a classic of the twentieth century; Fitzgerald’s masterpiece influences even the present-day generation. It encourages us, to stop aimless walks to school, obsession with joining companies, and blind pursuit of empty goals. The Great Gatsby stimulates us to reconsider our true dream – just as it has done for me.

The only dream Gatsby craved throughout his whole life was Daisy. From the moment he met Daisy, his life revolved around her. He survived in the war, dreaming of their reunion. He set his foot into the illegal industry of alcohol trafficking, to earn enough money to be socially approved as Daisy’s partner. He spent thousands of dollars hosting lavish parties every Saturday, in hope that Daisy would one day attend his party by chance.

Ironically, Daisy does not seem to be eligible as the subject of such admiration. She is not noble, virtuous, or high-spirited at all; rather, she is frivolous, irresponsible, and dependent. Despite her promise to remain loyal to Gatsby, she could not bear the long years until Gatsby’s discharge. Within a few years, Daisy started “keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men, and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside her bed.” This shows that Daisy is superficial and unfaithful, easily forgetting her responsibility over an absent lover. Such lightness and irresponsibility make her to act without thinking about consequences – for example, speaking out that Gatsby “look so cool” in presence of Tom, which is enough for him to sense the secrets of an affair. Therefore, to prevent herself from committing such imprudent acts, she must depend on others. This is why Gatsby and Tom, during their dispute over Daisy’s love, repeatedly said that they are “going to take better care of [Daisy].” She is not an independent human, but rather a reliant doll.

Daisy doll, thus, due to her dependency, is a character without identity. Her life is not her own, but somebody else’s. Her opinions are not originated from her inner voice, but from people surrounding her. Daisy’s decision to marry Tom, for instance, was not because she truly loved him; rather, it was because of her family and friends’ recommendation to marry an affluent man from the upper class. The dream Gatsby had so arduously wished to achieve for years was an obscure, shallow, and will-less girl.

What Gatsby gained from his pursuit of this meaningless dream was nothing more than death. As Daisy became absorbed in her surroundings’, she appreciated external, material, and superficial values such as traditional aristocracy, more than inner, loving-natured, and thoughtful ones. Her prioritized values, such as distinguished families and inherited wealth, were something Gatsby, a son of “shiftless and unsuccessful farm people,” could never achieve. For Daisy, without her own identity, who thus could not go against the general trend, abandoning Gatsby was easier than forsaking society’s value. A dreamer cannot exist without his dream; for Gatsby, deserted by his dream, the end—death—was inevitable.

Reading Gatsby’s tragic end, a thought quickly passed my mind: maybe my dream was somehow similar to Gatsby’s. I asked myself; does my dream have an identity? Why do I “want to go to university”? No answer hitting my mind, I realized that my dream was ambiguous and ungrounded. There was no clear vision that I could achieve only by going to university and studying. I, surrounded by parents, teachers, and friends discussing college admission every day, just vaguely thought that “I want to go to university!”, a common but identity-lacking dream that a student must or should have. Realizing this shocking truth, I panicked, thinking that unless I find a concrete dream, I might be Gatsby Jr.

I started to ponder, “What should I do?” but no definite answers came to my mind. In anxiety, I searched various curriculums of universities, and asked for advice to seniors who already chose their major. Despite all those efforts, I still did not discover the true reason to go to university – there were several courses and advices to which I was inclined, but none of them was enough for me to devote my whole life.

Then I remembered a quote from Mark Twain: “The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.” Realizing the vagueness of my dream, and admitting that I haven’t yet reached a point where I can really say what I want, was not a disappointing stage at all. Recognizing the limit and trying to improve… it was, by itself, already a step further than Gatsby’s goal. As long as I keep in mind the importance of having a concrete, identified, and qualified dream, I am confident that I will find one in near future.