I just finished Mr. Fitzgerald's novel, and loved it. Of course.
At first, when I finished it, I thought I had had an epiphany; the beautiful yet murky, mysterious yet strikingly clear metaphors and symbols; the endearing yet foreign characters...all lay before me, unveiled and mine for the taking.
Except, oh wait. Everyone (or, at least, nearly everyone) who has read Gatsby since it was published in the 1920's has had those exact same startling realizations. And the craziest thing is, they did it without SparkNotes there to comfort and guide them along the path of enlightenment concerning Jay, Daisy, and the American Dream. I kid. But seriously, people before SparkNotes were smart. Really smart. Reaaaaaaallllly smart.
Anyway, the whole point of this post was really just to let you know that basically none of my thoughts (or yours, for that matter) are original. It is kind of a terrifying (and sometimes incredibly comforting) idea.
In conclusion, here's a quote about Tom Buchanan -
At first, when I finished it, I thought I had had an epiphany; the beautiful yet murky, mysterious yet strikingly clear metaphors and symbols; the endearing yet foreign characters...all lay before me, unveiled and mine for the taking.
Except, oh wait. Everyone (or, at least, nearly everyone) who has read Gatsby since it was published in the 1920's has had those exact same startling realizations. And the craziest thing is, they did it without SparkNotes there to comfort and guide them along the path of enlightenment concerning Jay, Daisy, and the American Dream. I kid. But seriously, people before SparkNotes were smart. Really smart. Reaaaaaaallllly smart.
Anyway, the whole point of this post was really just to let you know that basically none of my thoughts (or yours, for that matter) are original. It is kind of a terrifying (and sometimes incredibly comforting) idea.
In conclusion, here's a quote about Tom Buchanan -
(Her husband was) one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax.
It's like you came to my house and recorded my family talking. We are always talking about how pretty much every idea has already been thought. I know, wasn't the book great. He was such a good writer. I totally had the epiphany thing too. I was so excited about it till I realized everyone in my literature class had it too (the smart ones anyway).
ReplyDeleteMore comforting than terrifying in my opinion.
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