NEW POST?! COULD IT BE TRUE?!

Yes, 'tis true. So let's dive in.

I'm finally a sophomore, so I guess I should change that in my profile. :-)

This semester, I'm taking:
*Western Civilization (History)
*American Literary Traditions (Literature)
*Advanced Shakespeare (Literature)
*Introduction to Psychology (Psych.)

I'm only taking 4 classes this time so that I can stay home and help my sisters with their homeschooling, which is working out nicely.

I'm about to run to class, so here's a paper I just pounded out in the last half hour (feedback is welcome). Hope to post again soon!


Wealth and Social Strata

I think it was the lyrics of the song Gatsby’s pianist played – “The Love Nest” – that said it best: “One thing’s sure and nothing’s surer/ The rich get richer and the poor get – children.” Such was the case in the early 1900s society; such was the case for Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan.

The first time we meet Daisy, we are told that she’s married to a real jerk, Tom, and that she has a young child. Daisy reflects on when she first had the baby that she had wished the child to grow up to be a “foolish girl” since the foolish women wouldn’t notice or care that their husbands were having affairs. Even though Daisy was considered “sophisticated” and “fashionable” (her husband had gone to Yale, was successful, and they lived in East Egg – a ritzy area), she felt poor in that there was an emptiness inside her.

Gatsby, likewise, had everything a man could wish for, yet had not the only thing he wanted in life: Daisy. In fact, the whole reason he even bought that gaudy mansion by the Sound was so that he could show off for Daisy and feel closer to her (staring out at the “enchanted” image of the green light on the dock). When he left for war (if I was reading this correctly), it seemed as though he lost his purpose in life and didn’t care whether he lived or died. It turned out that he, in his depressed state, led a group of men into a heated area of battle and made it out alive; he was even decorated and rewarded. That, combined with what his family left him and the business he conducted, made him a very wealthy man; he was able to turn his dreams of success into a reality (which is what, I’m guessing, makes him “the Great Gatsby”). This is something he really enjoys showing off, perhaps too much. Because of that, I feel as though Gatsby’s dreams of fame and fortune came true but then got in the way of his dream to be with Daisy. I think Nick – or F.S. Fitzgerald – is both directly and subtly implying that when the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of wealth collide, something’s got to give. Both were rich by society’s standards, but when they looked inside their hearts, they were as poor as peasants.