Gatsby dreams
Busy. No time for idle chatter. You’ll have to get by on a rewarmed gruel constituted of a month-old article from The New York Times that I couldn’t figure out how to incorporate into a fully-realized post at the time, and still haven’t—I just enjoyed the article.
Like most people, I was made to read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in high school. I remember that it led to ample discussion, though I can’t quite recall how it was received amongst my classmates. I liked it well enough to want to keep a copy of it in my personal library—a copy that I would actually look at from time to time—though I think that my enjoyment of it probably derived more from the skilled use of language and the mood that Fitzgerald is able to sustain than from an identification with the themes that it embodies.
A colleague, who once upon a time taught high school English, just told me that in her opinion, Gatsby is a book that “can only really be understood from the perspective of the time in which it was written.” That was, by the way, her immediate reaction upon my totally random question about her feelings regarding The Great Gatsby. The great thing about working in a library is that nobody thinks you’re weird when you ambush them with a literature-related non sequitur.
In her view, the halcyon days of the 1920s United States were so vastly out of sync with anything that came either before or after that those years necessarily exist in their own sort of chronal twilight zone, where the rules and values for living are peculiar. As a result, she said, the only truly identifiable element to modern readers is the notion of an “undying devotion”, which is in truth “not realistic”, but is nevertheless something to which men and women will probably always aspire to either inspire or possess—high school kids even more so, I would venture to say.
In any case, when she taught the novel, she would provide a preëmptory apology to her pupils: you won’t get it and it will probably bore you to sleep, but you have to read it, anyway.
It’s funny, because I would have supposed that anybody who has read Gatsby would probably have some kind of relationship with it—and maybe my colleague’s statements don’t invalidate that. It’s the sort of book from which you’re almost obliged to take something away. So back to The New York Times.
Sara Rimer did an article on February 17 dealing with the current generation’s relationship with the theme of possibility as symbolized or embodied somehow by the green light at the far end of the dock that held Gatsby’s fascination and longing in the novel. Rimer interviewed students in high school English classes at Boston Latin School and nearby Fenway School as a microcosm of young America as they reflected upon the current state of the American dream.
You can read “Gatsby’s Green Light Beckons a New Set of Strivers” here, though I want to post a few pieces that I enjoyed or found interesting.
Some educators say the best way to engage racially and ethnically diverse students in reading is with books that mirror their lives and culture. But others say that while a variety of literary voices is important, “Gatsby” – still required reading at half the high schools in the country – resonates powerfully among urban adolescents, many of them first- and second-generation immigrants, who are striving to ascend in 21st-century America.
“They all understand what it is to strive for something,” said Susan Moran, who is the director of the English program at Boston Latin and who has been teaching “Gatsby” for 32 years, starting at South Boston High School, “to want to be someone you’re not, to want to achieve something that’s just beyond reach, whether it’s professional success or wealth or idealized love – or a 4.0 or admission to Harvard.”
The novel had fallen into near obscurity by the time Fitzgerald died in 1940, said Charles Scribner III, whose great-grandfather signed the author with the family publishing company in 1919. It was revived in the 1950s and ’60s when Mr. Scribner’s father, Charles Scribner Jr., started publishing a paperback version and a student edition for colleges and high schools.
[...]
“I see Tom as this really mean jock,” said Vimin To, a 15-year-old Boston Latin sophomore who is in Kay Moon’s American literature class. “When he was in high school, he was king of the hill. He had it all. He was higher than everyone, even the teachers.”
As for Daisy, in Vimin’s view: “She’s turned into an empty person. Like Paris Hilton.”
Vimin’s father works in a restaurant – “not very glamorous,” Vimin said – and came to the United States as a refugee from Vietnam. Vimin relates to the story of Gatsby’s rise from the backwoods of North Dakota to New York. “It’s a very inspirational tale, especially when you’re from a background such as Mr. Gatsby,” he said.
[...]
“I think this American dream is an interpretation of a white poor man’s dream,” Nicole Doñe, 17, whose family is from the Dominican Republic, said during a lively class discussion. “For me the American dream is working hard for something you want. It’s not about having money. My dream is to get an education that I can’t get in the Dominican Republic, to live comfortably.”
Several of her classmates disagreed. “The American dream has a lot to do with money,” said Harkeem Steed, 17, who compared Gatsby to his hero, Jay-Z.
[...]
“The culture sells the American dream so hard and so relentlessly, but they’re wary, and they should be,” she continued. “One reason students appreciate the book is that there is a level of honesty that they value. They need these honest stories to perhaps balance what is otherwise presented as this shining possibility for everyone.”
During a recent discussion with several other students in Ms. Moon’s class, Will Murphy, 16, whose father works two jobs as a firefighter and an E.M.T., was relating Gatsby’s accumulation of enormous wealth to his own chances of hitting it big in today’s economy. “Getting rich seems so far out of the picture,” said Will, who has a part-time job scooping ice cream. “Everybody thinks about it, but the older you get, the less possible it seems.”
[...]
As a sophomore working to meet the school’s demands, Shauna sometimes feels as if her mother’s green light is her. “She puts all her hopes in me,” said Shauna, who talks about becoming a thoracic surgeon. “I have all this weight and responsibility. Sometimes I can’t live up to it.”
[...]
Jinzhao Wang, meanwhile, has been reflecting more deeply about the meaning of the green light. “I’m not an American citizen, so when I apply to college I will be competing with all the top students in Asia,” said Jinzhao, whose parents are teachers and who lives in the Allston neighborhood, across the river from Cambridge and the red brick buildings of Harvard. “I have to set an even higher standard.”
Here, too, she had found inspiration in “Gatsby.” “The Dutch settlers went all the way across the ocean to this new land – America,” Jinzhao said, referring to Nick’s bittersweet reflections that end the book. “America appears to the Dutch settlers as Daisy appears to Gatsby. Gatsby’s hopes and dreams are American ideals. His effort is the real ideal of the American dream.”
Almost makes me want to read The Great Gatsby again. Almost.
