#2 The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Number two on the list of the best novels of all time is The Great Gatsby. Like many of us, I read this years ago in high school or college. I remember it as a story about love, a tragedy of a lost love. Goodness no. This time around, I was struck by everything in this novel being the opposite of love.

What is the opposite of love? The thesaurus says the answer is hate. Then there’s the famous quote, “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference”, which we can easily identify with.  The truth is that the opposite of love is actually fear.

Fear of failure. Fear of what people will think of me. Fear that I will look stupid. Fear of the unknown. Fear of revealing myself, of exposing my true self. Fear of rejection. Fear that I am not worthy. Every human on the planet feels these fears from time to time. But when fear kicks into overdrive, it blocks you from all kinds of love.

Let’s take a look at some of the characters.

Nick Carraway: Nick, our earnest narrator, is afraid of being too judgmental and prides himself on being tolerant, honest, and objective. Nick is not at all honest in the book. Afraid of being an outcast, Nick gets sucked into Gatsby’s world, accepts drinks when he doesn’t feel like it, hangs out with people he doesn’t like, dates a woman with opposite values, and hides truths from everyone. Nick’s fears lead him to leave the east coast for the Midwest at the end of the novel. I understand that Fitzgerald’s goal is for us to see the east coast as “American excess” and the Midwest as “getting back to our morals and values”, but we all know our poor choices and our struggles are not reliant on our zip code.

“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”

Daisy Buchanan: We are meant to perceive Daisy as having charm, wealth, and sophistication. As you can imagine, these are all the things a poverty-stricken Gatsby could want from life. However, Daisy is by far the weakest and most pathetic character in the novel. It is not clear whether she is capable of loving Gatsby, her husband, or her child. She told Gatsby she would wait for him until after the war, then married Tom instead. She had an affair with Gatsby while married to Tom. She drove drunk, killed a woman, and let Gatsby take the blame. She used her money to run and hide afterwards. Daisy’s crippling fear is caring for others in any way that will hold her accountable.

“If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him.”

Tom Buchanan: Tom is afraid of Gatsby’s “new wealth” because it is a threat to his worldview. His worldview is that people with money have it because they deserve it and should be permanent members of an American aristocracy. (Fuck off, Tom.)

“You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.”

Jay Gatsby: Gatsby’s biggest fear is being trapped in the poverty and tedious insignificance of his youth.  When he first meets Daisy, he hides his past from her because he’s afraid she won’t love him if she knows the truth. He’s so desperate to avoid destitution that he chooses a life of crime to win the love of someone who never even truly knew him; indeed, Gatsby never truly sees Daisy for who she is either. Daisy does nothing to deserve anyone’s love and admiration. His fear prevents him from seeing her fully. Gatsby may have loved Daisy at some point, but by the time of the novel's setting, she has become just another thing he needs to acquire to fulfill the image of his reinvented, illusory self.

“It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.”

Because of all the fear, there is no love anywhere. I think this is what makes this book such a classic, what makes it speak to us time and again. It is a dystopian tale so terrible, so bereft of any meaningful, honorable lives, that we can’t look away. We want to learn from this, we want to do everything in our power not to live these lives, not to make these terrible choices. And all the while, this grim dystopia is laid out for us in the most beautiful prose ever written, perfectly capturing so many of the other human emotions we all experience. The incongruity is too exquisite, too satisfying to abandon. Fitzgerald sees us. I believe he wants us to be afraid of becoming these characters. Make good choices. Love with all your might.

“The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names.

The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word.”