When I turned the last page of "The Great Gatsby", I inexplicably recalled reading Gogol's "Nevsky Prospects" one autumn night a year ago. When I witnessed the passion of an innocent and weak young man being completely shattered by the absurdity of reality in the charming street lights and noisy crowds of Nevsky Prospekt, I felt an indescribable emotion, which left me with nowhere to hide. . The protagonist in the book, Piskarev, spent his whole life pursuing love at a glance, but the charming girl turned into an unreasonable prostitute, so his pursuit of beauty pushed him to the end of his life in a mocking way. The end. Then, I came to a conclusion during that somewhat panicked night: Don’t try to save anyone. Because in this world, there are not many people who hope to continue to extend their dreams under the blue sky, including love. Helpless idealistic yearning and attempts to change others will always become pale and absurd. However, this conclusion once again became indescribably weak and monotonous in the face of "The Great Gatsby".
Some people say that Fitzgerald shows us the illusion of the bubble-like glitzy reality of the American "Jazz Age", but I seem to only see Gatsby in his grand party , in the mingling of glasses under the brilliant lights, in the hypocritical conversations of countless rich people and dazzling stars who don't know each other, an impulse of rebellion against the flow of life surges nervously towards the sea, an impulse of waiting forever.
Every day, Gatsby would tremble at this kind of waiting at the edge of the sea. No matter how gentle the night was, no matter how close Daisy’s figure was to him, all he could do was to accompany the girl behind him. Gleaming castle-like mansions, heavy breathing and eternal solitude. In the end, only Nick, Gatsby's only friend, understood his waiting. Perhaps it should be said that Fitzgerald understood the wait in the crowd. Although Fitzgerald later put this waiting behind him and fell into unstoppable failure, he was unable to resolve the unspeakable loneliness and anxiety of waiting. But when Gatsby was absurdly shot to death with a pistol, Nick in his novel sat sadly on the beach where Gatsby had been many times, remembering that long-lasting, unknown world. In his infinite melancholy, Gatsby's dream has also drifted away. In the vague hallucination of people's voices, only Gatsby has disappeared from this chaotic world. What is left behind is the regression after rowing against the current, and his calmness. And the eyes are like those of a child nervously waiting for love and dreaming.
Nick also recalled the exciting train rides home from his youth. We have reason to suspect that Gatsby's soul did not go home after the long wait, but after that dusk, those innocent greetings and mutual attachments gathered at the dark station, and the two sides of the running train in the cold winter night The infinite stretch of snow for all the returnees in the distance, just after Gatsby's death, seems to make us realize what is the most important part of the soul: the obsession with unrealized dreams.
The place you couldn’t reach in the end, the person you couldn’t hold hands with in the end, will always evoke your endless thoughts. Even if you realize later in life that you no longer need what you once dreamed of, or you have more now, your dreams from back then will still torture you over and over again late at night.
Unfortunately, although we have all heard "the ringing of snowmobile bells in the freezing dark night" and have all seen "the shadow of the Christmas holly wreath reflected on the snow by the lights in the window", but After many years, we will not associate them with the intoxicating green behind the dock, the most important moment in Gatsby's life, and we no longer have the courage to repeat the dream of that year, or even want to mention it. Because of this, we will eventually stand on the side of reality. What we get is a relatively easy-to-satisfy material life and a seemingly stable life. Gatsby, the Great Gatsby, will always stand on our side. On the other side of the river, I watched sadly but not sadly as the lamentations of waiting endlessly surrounded the ancient tragedies, tragedies that had been repeated to countless people in countless generations.