/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.8730084]

There's more to talk about in these 180 pages than all of literature combined

[Anonymous No.8730090]

>>8730084
Those 180 pages are part of "all literature combined", so I doubt it.

[Anonymous No.8730105]

>>8730084
its a good book no doubt, but gatsby wasn't the first gatsby

[Anonymous No.8730164]

>>8730084
It really sucks that it gets horned in with "high school lit" it's really very incredible, the most American novel probably

[Anonymous No.8730341]

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

[Anonymous No.8730372]

>>8730341
I read this book in my junior year of high school for ap english.

I never really understood what the last line meant, can anyone clarify?

apologies if i'm dumb

[Anonymous No.8730380]

SHOT IN THE POOL
THE PE POO PADDLE POOL
THE ENDING WASN'T GOOD
SHOULD NOT HAVE GONE TO THE POOL

[Anonymous No.8730388]

>>8730372
He's pretty much saying that everyone suffers from a false nostalgia.

[Anonymous No.8730397]

>>8730084

[Anonymous No.8730457]

>>8730388
aww shieet nigga

that was it?
I mean I figured it related to a struggle of some sort, but i thought it might be some grander statement about perseverance in the face of what is revealed to be some sort of overwhelming outside influence.
The whole boats against the current thing makes it sound as though it is some sort of broad or I don't know, some thing that life and the psyche is really suffuse with.
But man, just false nostalgia? That's a bummer.

Honestly the metaphor as you put it sounds janky
It's not on you,I just find it underwhelming.
I thought it would be revelatory, but what you've said is pretty apparent through the course of the story.

[Anonymous No.8730462]

>>8730457
One more thing
tl:dr I am too dumb to see what is in front of my stupid face

[Anonymous No.8730466]

>>8730084
I agree with you my hyper-intellectual anon friend.

[Anonymous No.8730478]

>>8730457
It is and it isn't about nostalgia. It is in the sense that it's about things we once had and can never get back. But it's also about the frontier, both America's and everybody's internal frontier.

What Gatsby lost wasn't Daisy, it was his youth and his pursuit of her.