Janae’s Blog

Fitzgerald makes the point here that at the end of the day, even if you’ve obtained what you thought you wanted, if there is no one to share it with, it’s really wasted a worthless. That’s a theme common throughout the whole novel. As clichéd as it sounds, no matter the opinion of what the American Dream is, it isn’t as sweet or wonderful unless you have someone who cares about it the same way you do, and supports you in it.

“I don’t think she ever loved him.” Gatsby turned around from a window and looked at me challengingly. “You must remember, old sport, she was very excited this afternoon. He told her those things in a way that frightened her-that made it look as if I was some kind of cheap sharper. And the result was she hardly knew what she was saying.”

He sat down gloomily.

” “Of course she might have loved him just for a minute, when they were first married-and loved me more even then, do you see?”

Suddenly he came out with a curious remark.

“In any case,” he said, “it was just personal.”

What could you make of that, except to suspect some intensity in his conception of the affair that couldn’t be measured?” (159)

Fitzgerald mentions that Gatsby might have perhaps recognized his mistakes, earlier in the chapter, but this just shows that Gatsby was so consumed with everything that he just can’t let it go, and that his entire life has been permanently altered by this, and doesn’t truly grasp the reality of the situation, or if he does, blatantly chooses to ignore it. It speaks for Gatsby’s character that he is incapable of letting go of the past and moving forward, no matter how clear it is made too him that he can never relive what once was.

The yellow car is of interest to me, as it is eventually Gatsby’s downfall because Wilson seeks him out to kill him after recognizing it. Yellow is a murky color, especially pale yellow. Gatsby’s car is yellow; the car that he and Daisy were in when their fate was sealed. It has been previously mentioned that the car they drove when five years prior was white. Metaphorically speaking: their relationship was white at first; pure young and innocent. However, little things happened to dilute the whiteness on their relationship to a pale yellow; still pretty, but not what it once was.