The Great Gatsby

In the book of Proverbs, King Solomon asks the following question:

Can a man walk on hot coals 

without his feet being scorched?

Solomon answers his own question with an eye to the deadly effects of adultery on human relationships:

So is he who sleeps with another man’s wife. No one who touches her will go unpunished.

For jealousy arouses a husband’s fury,    

and he will show no mercy when he takes revenge.

He will not accept any compensation;    

he will refuse a bribe, however great it is.

The Great Gatsby was written 1925 by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This American classic is narrated by Nick Carraway, a man who grew up in Minnesota and moved to New York City to sell bonds after World War I.

Nick happened to rent a small home next to the mansion of Jay Gatsby in 1922. Gatsby threw lavish parties for anybody who chose to attend. People wondered who Gatsby was, and why he would throw such parties for complete strangers.

Nobody attending his parties knew that Gatsby was a bootlegger who ran an underground liquor network around the country. They only knew rumors about his heroism in the War and his mysterious pedigree.

Nobody knew that Gatsby threw parties to entice a specific woman into his life. He hoped that his beautiful neighbor Daisy Buchanan would show up at one of his soirées, so they could reignite the passion of their previous relationship.

Gatsby wanted to marry Daisy, a slender woman of leisure and the wife of Tom Buchanan. Tom was heir to a fortune, and he was also involved with his own thickish mistress named Myrtle, the wife of an auto mechanic living in the poor section of town.

Almost every high school student in America knows how the lives of these protagonists developed and tragically resolved. The novel is a snapshot of life among the wealthy in the era of Prohibition and the fleeting prosperity before the market crash of 1929.

Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan both suffered for their infidelity. Myrtle and her husband also proved to be victims and agents of their violent fate.

Nick escaped the ultimate consequence of foolish behavior committed by people around him, although he was tempted by Gatsby and the Buchanans to betray his moral compass by participating in debauchery and easy money.

He was both wise and lucky enough to avoid the entanglements of physical desire and financial greed that were offered to him by attractive people.

It is fun for modern readers to look back and learn about the world as it was during the Roaring Twenties, but the novel was contemporaneous to the events it described. The story was meant as social commentary to his peers and fellow Americans at the time.

The story is crisply written and makes you think about life, especially about contentment, and how we often suffer the painful death of our dreams. It illustrates how hard we strive to enjoy pleasure and to avoid responsibilities.

The book also gives narrative form to the proverbs of King Solomon. While sleeping around with our married neighbors may be exciting, our feet will be scorched by walking on those hot coals, as was explicitly detailed in the short novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald one hundred years ago.

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The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

FUN FACT:

A quote from The Great Gatsby is on the ceiling of Bill Gates' library.

He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.