The Hearth and the Salamandor

           

                This book terrifies me. I know it was written for a completely different time in American history, but it applies today. As Clarisse says, “No one has time for anyone anymore.” Today, you can’t have a conversation with most people without them checking their phones during the conversation. And the dependency on drugs to sleep is also accurate. Americans pop pills for EVERYTHING. There are anti-depressants to take on top of your anti-depressants. It’s almost as if Bradbury’s fear of what the world may become is indeed happening.  And reading people’s lips while you have thimbles in your ear? Ipod. Most families don’t even eat dinner together, so they certainly don’t sit around all night just to talk. The last time I stayed up and talked to my family was July 2010. The fact that Mildred and Guy can’t remember where they met is just awful.

                The idea that we should all be the same is boring. I don’t want to live in a world where I’m suppose to just have easy pleasure and never be challenged to use my intelligence (intelligence that I have acquired from reading). Beatty says that Clarisse is better off dead, and honestly, I agree. What good could an inquisitive and creative mind like hers gain from a world like this? The depression that consumes this world Bradbury has made is so surprising, yet we’re more or less living in it.

The Great Gatsby

                The American dream is that any man can pull himself up by his boot straps and make something of himself. James Truslow Adams once said, “[The American dream] is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.” The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was written in a time when the American dream thrived. Fitzgerald was known for his opposition to the materialistic nature of Americans, and while the American dream is to drive up ones social standings, it is impossible to do so without focusing on money and material possessions. The Great Gatsby portrays the withering of the American dream by showing readers that material things and focus social standings bring nothing but unhappiness. Also, regardless of what we obtain for ourselves in life, we all die.

                The title character Jay Gatsby spends his entire adulthood trying to climb social ranks and earn money so that he may have Daisy, the love of his life. Gatsby is new money and has achieved the American dream as he came from almost nothing. After Gatsby’s death, his father “saw the height and splendor of the hall and the great room opening out from it into other rooms; his grief began to be mixed with an awed pride.” Gatsby’s father is proud of his son for making something of himself, but would he hold that same pride if he knew that Gatsby only did so for a woman who cares more for her social standings than love? Or if he knew that Gatsby’s wealth comes from shady business and gambling? The surface of Gatsby’s life looks dazzling, but at the end of the day, he is alone and empty.

                When Gatsby realizes Daisy will never be with him again, he loses everything he has worked so hard to reach. All the money in the world couldn’t bring Daisy back, and Daisy is Gatsby’s only real dream. One would think that with all he has, he’ll be just fine, but money can’t bring happiness or love. In preparation for Gatsby’s funeral, Nick contacted everyone he could, and on the day of the ceremony, “It wasn’t any use. No one came.” Gatsby is known for extravagant parties, and people who have never even met him attend. However, pockets full of money and glasses full of champagne mean nothing in the end.

                Nick says, “These were careless people.” I think that’s the most proper adjective. They’re not careless in the sense that a teenager could be referred to as careless when they make an unwise decision. They are all careless in the sense that they truly don’t care for one another.  At the end when Nick speaks of a drunken woman on a stretcher, he says, “No one knows the woman’s name, and no one cares.” The American dream is to raise your social standards, but this rise in standards offers no true compassion from others.  No matter how much we strive to hold this dream, the day will always come when “the party [is] over”.

The Great Gatsby, 5-9

The message of this book is so heart-breaking and beautiful. My favorite part of the entire book is the last sentence. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Initially, I got very upset when I finished The Great Gatsby. Because the message is, as you said, we live these mundane, meaningless live; then we die. When Nick talks about Tom and Daisy the night after the accident, he says “They weren’t happy…and yet they weren’t unhappy either.” He follows this statement by saying that Gatsby spent the night “watching over nothing”. At first, his last statement seems to mean only that nothing happened between Tom and Daisy that night, but it’s deeper than that. Tom and Daisy were nothing. They were bound to each other still, but they had fizzled out. While they might have loved once, they now simply existed.

                The same is true for Gatsby after he realizes that he has lost Daisy for good. He spent his whole life trying to reach her, and he finally gave up. He accepts that she’s not coming back and tries to make peace with it; then he dies. When no one came to Gatsby’s funeral, the message really sank in for me. Gatsby lived what’s considered the American Dream, but who really dreams of spending his or her entire life constantly reaching for more material things just to die? Sure, people attended Gatsby’s parties, but at the end of the day, Nick was the only person who really gave a damn about him. And I guess, when “the party [is] over”, that’s the bottom line. You can spend your life striving to obtain whatever you wish, but we all die. And when we die, none of it matters anymore.