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Catalina's Reviews > The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby (Wordsworth Classics)
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This review contains spoilers. But since the book has been around for a very long time and is not even faintly a new bestseller blockbuster, I'm not going to hide them. You have probably read it anyway. You should have. Read on at your own risk.
In Charles Williams' book, Descent into Hell, there is a point where the dreams of those who exist on their dreams are taken away. For example, a man who either strongly imagined a girl for himself or actually summoned a demon to impersonate her � and builds his whole life around this toxic and entirely imaginary relationship � goes mad. Those dreams just collapse. Implode. Burst like balloons into air and thin fragments of colourful plastic. If I was doing my English Literature A-Level again, I would write you a whole 2500 word essay comparing The Great Gatsby to Descent into Hell. How a person can build great sparkling castles and detailed images of other people and imagined situations, pursuing them to somehow make them come real in the future, when really it is only in the past and in their minds. The movie Inception has this theme too � is it coincidence that Leonado DiCaprio plays both characters that build dream-castles out of the past about the women they loved?
In some ways I admire Gatsby: he was nobody at all, and he decided that he was going to be "The Great Gatsby", and he went ahead and did it. But something went wrong along the way. What? (Don't look at me, I don't know! This isn't a self-help book for dreamy introverts!) When are dreams healthy things, and when do they turn toxic?
But when your dreams have collapsed and nobody comes to your funeral, what then? What are we aiming for? Do we wake up or die? What's the alternative? What is real? Does it matter? Will that spinning top keep spinning forever?
In Charles Williams' book, Descent into Hell, there is a point where the dreams of those who exist on their dreams are taken away. For example, a man who either strongly imagined a girl for himself or actually summoned a demon to impersonate her � and builds his whole life around this toxic and entirely imaginary relationship � goes mad. Those dreams just collapse. Implode. Burst like balloons into air and thin fragments of colourful plastic. If I was doing my English Literature A-Level again, I would write you a whole 2500 word essay comparing The Great Gatsby to Descent into Hell. How a person can build great sparkling castles and detailed images of other people and imagined situations, pursuing them to somehow make them come real in the future, when really it is only in the past and in their minds. The movie Inception has this theme too � is it coincidence that Leonado DiCaprio plays both characters that build dream-castles out of the past about the women they loved?
In some ways I admire Gatsby: he was nobody at all, and he decided that he was going to be "The Great Gatsby", and he went ahead and did it. But something went wrong along the way. What? (Don't look at me, I don't know! This isn't a self-help book for dreamy introverts!) When are dreams healthy things, and when do they turn toxic?
But when your dreams have collapsed and nobody comes to your funeral, what then? What are we aiming for? Do we wake up or die? What's the alternative? What is real? Does it matter? Will that spinning top keep spinning forever?
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