The Dark Side of Living the Good Life, Through Quotes From F Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby'

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is a boozy blur of a book, but it's not lacking in darker themes. From the stilted and suffocating nature of class relations, to the pain of lost love, the novel traces a picture of modernity and insists that life can be hard, even for a millionaire playboy who throws fabulous parties. (Wait, that doesn't seem right... but try to stay with us.) The roaring twenties, as Fitzgerald presents them, are just as ugly as they are glamorous, just as stifling as they are loose.It's no secret that the narrator of The Great Gatsby, Nick, feels ambivalent about his place in the upper class. Although he lives in the less-fashionable West Egg, he's still up there in terms of the social ladder. In one of the more important passages in the book, he quotes his father: "'Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages you've had.'" It's obvious that this one statement has meant a lot to Nick - after all, he's been "turning it over in [his] mind ever since" - but it doesn't mean he takes it at face value. A little later, Nick refers back to the conversation: "I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth." Nick can't shake himself of his ideas about his own status, but at least he recognizes his own "snobbishness."We could talk about society all day long, but if you're going to choose one The Great Gatsby quote, it will probably have something to do with the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. Gatsby moved into the house that he did so that he could see this bit of Daisy, his long-lost love, across the water every night. As soon as she finally ends up at his house, Nick observes that "it was again a green light on a dock." Daisy's actual presence means that "his count of enchanted objects had diminished by one." Nevertheless, the green light is what shapes the course of Gatsby's life, despite the fact that he has no hope of being with Daisy again. Nick's final observation about him is that "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us."That brings us to the quote that ties it all together, The Great Gatsby's very last line. "So we beat on," Nick intones, "boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." And no, he doesn't just mean that prohibition will soon be overturned, and things back to the way they should be. What Nick really seems to be talking about is the inescapability of our pasts. Furthermore, it seems that fighting against the current doesn't do much good. Does this final quote express a kind of despair, the hopelessness of ever being able to move on? Or does it suggest that if only we stop rowing and simply drift, we'll find the peace and fulfillment we are all looking for? Your answer might change depending on your mood, and that kind of complexity is what a great book offers. dr seuss cat in hat quotes