Page Fifty

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

I started this book last summer, thought it humdrum, and tossed it aside. Luckily, I picked it up again this summer and read it straight through. With lines like "I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life," how can you not enjoy this book and marvel at Fitzgerald's use of language. In fact, just as that quote reveals, the book - to me - is a commentary on the oppositions that Nick Carraway's 1920s self-absorbed American society reveals: within/without; enchanted/repelled; East/West. It is interesting to note how the characters illicit no pity for the reader, yet even with that detachment the book carries the reader into a society that is as shallow as its characters. A true testament to Fitzgerald's writing style as - had it not been for this - I would have reshelved the book a second time.

"He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. 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 eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey."