Some time ago, I read this book by Scott Fitzgerald
called "The Great Gatsby"... I was enchanted at once by the unique,
romantic and secretive nature of the main character. For me, Gatsby represented
something that I thought to be impossible by then: The incarnation of dreams.
A green light ... That little green light in the
end of Daisy's dock has turned into a symbol for every impossible dream, a
token for every kind of strange and extravagant utopia. Is there someone brave
enough to stand across this light, counting the hours, the days and the years,
longing for the moment when he'll finally grasp
the unearthly glimpse? Is
anyone romantic enough so as to build a whole life on the broken remaining of a
far forgotten dream? Who could possibly sacrifice his entire world without
hesitation just to experience some seconds of the illusion of his vision? Jay
Gatsby. The man who would do a n y t h i n g for the sake of love. The man who
preferred to shut his eyes to reality and fall behind a phantom - just like a
child who seeks to find fairies hiding under the leafs.
He wants to repeat the past. Can someone repeat the
past? Why would somebody want to go back? When he is happy? I doubt that, since
when you are happy all you want is to make the moment last longer. But what
happens if you are sad? If you feel like you made an enormous mistake once?
Then you do want to go back and change the wrong decision. Gatsby had a really
good reason for wanting to go back. Has was being crushed by the weight of his
own mistake. In his delusion of grandeur he thought that love could wait for
him to fulfil his ambitions. He was poor; he thought he was not appropriate for
Daisy, so he did everything he could to become someone worthy of standing by
her side. But by then, Daisy was gone.
When Jay said that one can repeat the past, he forgot a very essential detail. He was ready to go back. But Daisy was not. She was not the girl he met on Louisville during the World War I anymore. In all those years, she had become a wife and a mother. She had gained some memories and she had a life. For Jay, running away with Daisy was not enough. He wanted to delete all her memories without him. And she just couldn’t or wouldn’t do it.
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A friend once told me something I think I‘ll never
forget. We were having a conversation over the whole “time” subject and he told
me “I have no idea whether the time is linear or not. But, we all count it in
round clocks, right?” That simple statement was a detail I‘ve never noticed
before. We do count time in repeated patterns – circles – hours, days, months…
they all go back to the first after the last one passes. Could this mean that
all human beings have a subconscious desire to turn the time back?
The thing is that in real life, time cannot be
reversed. One can only correct his mistakes by planning a new route on the map.
The only way of repeating the past is by wondering in our memories.
Before the end of the book, Jay is a hero in the
reader’s heart. He fought hard for his dream. Just like a child he refused to accept
the truth and he never gave up hope, not even in his very last moments. He died
a hero that no one would recognise. He willingly took the blame for everything
they charged him with cause all that mattered to him was Daisy. The woman who
was too afraid to leave her comfortable life for what her heart wished for and
the same beautiful,
dissembler and self-centered woman who never called or show any sign of sadness
when her dream was no more.
“So we beat on boats against the current borne back
ceaselessly into the past”…
- E.
