Obviously I’ve been on a bit of a The Great Gatsby kick lately, so it should come as no surprise that I’ve been reading articles about it when I find them.

Ezra Klein of the Washington Post (and one of my favorite nerds) wrote a blog entry on his problem with The Great Gatsby. Lots of people have problems with the book, but this was the first time I encountered his particular problem with it.

Spoilers, obviously, but the book is 88 years old, so…

Klein’s ultimate conclusion is that the way the end of the book unfolds – a series of unfortunate coincidences and a lot of bad timing – takes away from the lessons the book teaches. I disagree with this. I think it’s part of Fitzgerald’s point that nobody shows up at Gatsby’s funeral. He is used by people who don’t know him for his money and free liquor and they don’t care that he’s gone, they’ll just get their booze somewhere else now. His business associates don’t turn out, and woman he’s loved and dreamed about for years doesn’t show up either.

It’s usually at funerals when everyone in the deceased’s life comes out of the woodwork to say goodbye and nobody shows up. But in order to show that, in order to have a funeral, Gatsby has to die somehow. Healthy 30ish year olds don’t just drop dead, even in 1925, so he has to be actively killed in some manner.

Klein also says that Fitzgerald got the ending wrong. He’s right in the sense that he means it. In 2013, it’s clear that Tom may have won the battle against Gatsby, but Tom, and the guys like Tom, don’t win the war. Tom’s a symbol of the establishment of the time: white, wealthy, powerful, connected, racist, etc… and that part of society is ultimately defeated – or at least, has a lot of their untouchable-ness taken away from them – by social progress.

At the time, Fitzgerald probably couldn’t see Tom ever not winning. Foresight is hard. And looking back on it now, isn’t it good to see how wrong Fitzgerald was?

Tagged: authors: f. scott fitzgerald, books: the great gatsby