"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I’m somewhat ashamed to say that I’m not really sure what I was supposed to get out of this book. There are certainly a plethora of bits and pieces that stood out: Gatsby’s ongoing loneliness and status as an outsider despite his wealth and parties, nearly every character being terrible people in some way, or the narrator’s conclusion that some deficiency doomed their time in the East from the start. It’s a very human story, I suppose, to have these people languishing in unimaginable wealth and hedonism while simultaneously failing to process their own emotions and desires.

How this book made me feel is something I’m more qualified to speak to than any notes on the story and characters. I’m conflicted: my instinct is to condemn these characters for their actions — the narrator, Gatsby, Tom, and Daisy in particular — but I’m left wondering how different from them I actually am. Specifically, I am just as prone to being passive. Nick (the narrator) in particular is subtly foul; his quiet enabling of Gatsby and Daisy’s affair allows the steady escalation that leads to things falling apart. No action Nick takes is particularly egregious, it’s the compounding result of him being passive and agreeing to several small requests. I’m not confident that I would be better. It’s this lack of confidence upon reflection that makes me wonder what right I have to judge these characters for their actions when I can’t confidently say I’d be better. I see some of the worst aspects of myself and others in these characters, and it’s disconcerting because there’s no resolution.

I think a tragedy is just a somewhat difficult type of story for me to stomach. Not in the sense that I can’t bear reading it or find it offensive, but in that I find this story in particular narratively unsatisfying. I’m sure that’s the point: no one receives their comeuppance and the single instance of violent revenge is dished out erroneously.

As I’ve (painfully slowly) pieced these paragraphs together, I suppose I have taken something away from this book, it’s just difficult to find the words to express.