Dreams and the failure of happiness in The Great Gatsby A commentary of the last page of the novel

Transcription

1 Dreams and the failure of happiness in The Great Gatsby A commentary of the last page of the novel "He looked around him wildly as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand" (The Great Gatsby) In The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, Francis Scott Fitzgerald painted the portrait of the American society of the 1920's in which the emotions moved between the disenchantment of the war and the illusion of a happier world. But illusions were swallowed up by the impending failure. In this excerpt, which corresponds to the end of the novel, Gatsby's dreams sank into oblivion. Nick, who had prepared everything to come back to the Midwest after the tragic death of Gatsby, decided to have a last look to Gatsby's house on the last night before his departure. He erased with his shoe an obscene word that had been written by a boy on a brick of the steps. Then he went down to the beach and sat down on the sand to contemplate the Long Island Sound. He had visions of the Dutch sailors that arrived many centuries ago to that part of the new world and then he began to think about Gatsby's dreams and, more generally, about the fact that human dreams are unattainable. How does the narrator show that human dreams are unattainable? Rhetorical devices build the pessimistic tone of the extract in which the joyful future, for ever present in human minds, always moves away regardless human beings' efforts to reach it. For that reason the only way to escape from metaphysical disappointment is to think in the glorious past. Rhetorical devises and internal metamorphoses What is striking in a first reading of this extract is the rhetorical devises that create its pessimistic tone. As the text is mainly narrative, there is a preponderance of the past tense. Nick is telling us what he did and thought in the last night before leaving to the Midwest. However, Nick ends his text using first, the present tense, then the future tense and then coming back to the present tense: "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us" (l.29-30). Nick draws the conclusion that the future "eluded us" and then: "but that's no matter ###tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms further... And one fine morning ###" (l.30-32). Obviously the interruption of the sentence here indicates the implicit meaning that nothing will change, that our dreams will keep on aborting no matter the effort we put on trying to realize them. Finally, in the two last lines of the extract, the narrator comes back to the present tense because he wants to make a remark that concerns all human beings at all times: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" (l.33-34). The other devise used by the narrator is a series of internal metamorphoses, represented in first place in a change of the pronouns. Nick wants to generalize. Now that the novel is arriving to its end, that everything is over, it is the time of drawing conclusions. The text begins in first person of singular with an account of what Nick did on that

2 last night: "I went over and looked at that huge incoherent failure of a house once more" (l.2-3), and then, when he sees the obscene word scrawled on the piece of brick: "I erased it" (l.5), and once he finishes "I wandered down to the beach" (l.6). The extract progresses in the same way until line 10: "And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I become aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch Sailors' eyes". When he begins to think about it, he stops the account of what he did and communicate his thoughts to the reader. Curiously the Dutch sailors becomes man with no determinant: "for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent", (l.16-17) and Nick uses the pronoun he to talk about man: "(...) compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired..." (l.17-19) Then he comes back to his account and begins to think about Gatsby. Once more he moves from I to He: "And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder...", (l.21-22) and then: "He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was..."(l.23-25). Nick no longer uses the first person of singular. He keeps on talking about Gatsby and he ends with the first person of plural we, which corresponds to his aim that is to deduce a general truth: "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us" (l.29-30). From here to the already quoted end he will use the pronoun we. Therefore in Nick's speech there is a peculiar sequence of referents: Nick, the Dutch sailors, (the) man, Gatsby and us. Nick, as we said, begins the account and the last reference to himself in first person of singular is in lines when he thinks about Gatsby: "I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light...". Here, the character disappears or at least the reader has the impression that his life as a character is suspended on that night, on that beach, facing the estuary even if of course the reader knows that he is writing the text retrospectively. But it is difficult though to know who is speaking from line 22 on, Nick or perhaps the author himself. Another interesting metamorphosis is the strange transformation of "Dutch sailors" into "man", without determinant. Instead of saying: "for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent", Nick could have said, as the reader was expecting, "for a transitory enchanted moment those men must have held his breath in the presence of this continent". As man refers to the general notion of Man, Nick elevated to an abstraction. Which enables him to do so may be a sentence few lines before: "And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away..."(l.11-12). The movement of the moon, indicates that the night has completely fallen. Night, in this context, may be interpreted as a metaphor of the topos uranus, the platonic place in which there is no time and no place, in which abstractions floats eternally. It is not irrelevant that "the irrelevant houses" melted away, given that the house, in the book, and particularly in this passage is an essential thing. House is not only the symbol of settlement 1 but also it can symbolize the writing 2 of the man in his transitory life, all what remains after 1 See line 14: "...the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house". Nick is talking about the trees of the island when the early settlers arrived in the 17h century. This sentence bears in a very interesting way the meaning of settlement. 2 Gatsby's house is Gatsby's writing and Nick did not allow that a vulgar writing was written upon.

3 men's death. And since a house is a writing, house is itself a symbol of time, of temporality. We all know that history begins with writing. Anyway, since the houses disappear, i.e., time disappears, Nick mentally goes to that place where he travels back in time, where he can come back to past "against the current", i.e. even if actually the time goes on, even if we can not escape from that current. Mentally men can go backwards to the past, i.e. remember his memories or he can go forward which means, have dreams, hopes, illusions. But in reality, Nick seems to say us, we can reach those dreams, we can not materialize them. Dreams projected forward: the unattainable happiness This extract follows the traditional spatial representation of dreams. Dreams, with the meaning of strongly desired goals, are always placed forwards in the space. The goal is always what is in front of you. Moreover dreams are also represented as visions (i.e. something that you see) and for that reason is also in front of you. But dreams are not only projected forwards but the focus of light projected there produces wonder. Wonder is a surprised mingled with admiration or curiosity. Dreams are so unusual, so extraordinary that wonders us. These two ideas concerning dreams are represented in the text in four couples: Dutch sailors-"the old island", man-"continent", Gatsby-"the green light", we-"orgastic future". In Nick's imagination, the old island appeared unexpectedly in front of the sailors: "I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes ###a fresh, green breast of the new world" (l.11-13). The fact that the narrator says "for Dutch sailors' eyes" evocates the idea that it was almost like a vision in an "enchanted moment", a vision that appeared to their eyes and surprised them. On the other hand, the concept "old island" becomes "a fresh, green breast of the new world". In other words the fact of being new is not absolute but relative, in relation to the new comers. Then in line 13-16, Nick writes: "Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams". We can wonder which is the "last and greatest of all human dreams". According to the critics, it is the dream of a new land, a better new place, the Utopia, the perfect society in which everyone is happy. The verb pander used in the sentence, which usually has an inmoral sense, means in the text, perhaps, satisfy that ambition, that unrealistic wish of finding the Utopia. But the trees "pandered in whispers" to that dream, in other words the presence of the trees made believe the man just for a moment that he had found that perfect place: "for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent...". That is why Nick uses an abstraction, man, without a determinant, because it not the sailors who were surprised and enchanted at the possibility of having found the New Land, but humanity en general. This possibility man envisages wonders him because is not only beautiful but unexpected: "compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something conmensurate to his capacity of wonder" (l17-20). Nick wanted to preserve zealously this writing, not only because he himself is a writer, the Gatsby's biographer, but also for respect.

4 The green light, both a real light and a metaphor of Gatsby's hope, appears also on the horizon at the sight of Gatsby's eyes. In chapter one Nick tells us that Gatsby even "stretched out his arms towards the dark water" as if he wanted to grasp that light. Nicks says in lines 21-25: "I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it". Like the Dutch sailors, Gatsby had "come a long way to this blue lawn", and like them, he had a vision, a hope, so marvellous that wondered him. The green light as well as the "fresh, green breast of the new world", were indeed real things; but their reality was bare, stripped of personal meanings projected upon them either by the sailors or by Gatsby. But in the text, the green light is also a metaphor of "orgastic future", in which Gatsby and the sailors believed, but also we, all the human beings, believe. Orgastic, unusual adjectif for orgasmic, has the meaning of ectasy, of joy, that supreme happiness so many times pursued by Gatsby, and that is only found in Utopia. Moreover, Nick remarks that that orgastic future "year by year recedes before us". Centuries ago, as well as in Gatsby's story "it eluded us". That is why the narrator uses the past tense, because it is a fact. And no matter we do, "run faster", "stretch our arms", that marvellous future, projected in front of us like a dream, like a green light, will continue eluding us. This is the reason Nick interrupts himself: "And one fine morning###". The joyful future is unattainable. What remains is a city on an island, a house, no the fulfillment of a dream. All our strive is useless, as useless as, paradoxically, think that it is useless because we always will want to reach our dreams even if they are unattainable. The only possibility to escape from here is to brood on the past. The past and our old wonder It is not a coincedence that during the main part of the extract, Nick thinks in the past. One might imagine that after erasing the obscene word written on the brick in Gatsby's house, he decided to write about Gatsby, i.e., to come back to his memories about him, in order to show the singularity of this man. If man's dreams are unattainable, Nick seems to think, the only possibility is to think about that beautiful and short moment in which he believed in them, in which their presence made him "held his breath", full of wonder. As dreams can not be fulfilled, the only possibility is to come back to the blessed moment in which we conceived them, in which we believed that they may come true, in which this possibility provoked our wonder and our enthusiasm. The "capacity for wonder" is thus complementary to the capacity for dream. In fact, Nick soon notices we all think in the past as a way to escape from metaphysical dispointment: "So beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" (l.33-34). But thinking about a moment of happinness is diferent from believing that we can reach absolute happiness. Talking about Gatsby's dream, Nick comments: "He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere

5 back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night" (l.26-28). In this context, behind is a preposition that refers to the past. Surprisingly, Nick disociates the notion that dreams are projected forwards, holding that Gatsby's dream was behind him. But is a dream still a dream if it is behind us? Whatever the answer may be, Nick seems to communicate the reader that Gatsby was a prisoner of a sublime (and perhaps unreal) past. At the end of chapter VI, when Nick tells Gatsby that repeating the past was impossible, Gatsby replies incredulously: "Can't repeat the past? (...) Why of course you can!". Gatsby's dream was to win back Daisy's love, to be with her again. But it had already happened, and that is why that wonderful moment was behind him. Contrary to those who believed in a Golden Age, Gastby thought that he could repeat that "Golden" moment when he was with Daisy, that he could reconstituate the past. It is possible to escape from that terrible fate of human beings in which the ecstatic future "recedes before us", just coming back mentally to our joyful memories; what it is not possible is to repeat those joyful moments. Conclusion The last page of The Great Gatsby is characterized by its pessimism in accordance with Fitzgerald's belief that failure was inevitable. Through a high poetic tone and complex rethorical devices, the narrator points out at the core of Gatsby's tragedy and more generally of human tragedy which consists in the fact that reality is far different from our dreams. The only possibility of escaping of this metaphysical disappointment is to come back mentally to the past, to that moment in which our capacity for dream is complemented by our capacity for wonder. Andrés Arboleda Toro