I’ve been rereading The Great Gatsby since many of my students are reading it in school and need help with their homework. I am still in awe of Fitzgerald’s descriptive powers and his facility with language. After I read these passages looking for an answer to a student’s homework question, I was so wrapped up in the prose that I forgot what I was looking for:
It amazed him — he had never been in such a beautiful house before. but what gave it an air of breathless intensity, was that Daisy lived there — it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him. There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms up-stairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors, and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year’s shining motor-cars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy — it increased her value in his eyes. He felt their presence all about the house, pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still vibrant emotions…
Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine; the wicker of the settee squeaked fashionably as she turned toward him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth. She had caught a cold, and it made her voice huskier and more charming than ever, and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.
Fitzgerald writes like a romantic, his scenes pulsating with mystery, nostalgia, and heart. I suppose I’ve been fascinated with the romance of wealth/capitalism lately. I’ll say more about it later, but Gatsby & Daisy are a good segue to be sure.
