The famous English novelist Mark Haddon once said,
"Reading is a conversation. All books talk.
But a good book listens as well."
Indubitably, The Great Gatsby is one of those
pristine and immaculate books which slowly and steadily inundate you with
emotions, consummately elicit literary aha' moments and then leave you in toto
flabbergasted. Though I have always felt bad for the unsuccessful life that
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald succumbed to, but after just one reading of this
stellar book, my sympathy for his has turned into a complete deferential
reverence for the mind that could envisage his characters, plots and scenes so
faultlessly and yet expose the gaudy and ostentatious world to its nakedness.
It is not the first time that I have read a classic literature.
Thomas Hardy, George Orwell and other great authors of the same forte has
appealed to me, but with certitude I can aver that there is something in Fitzgerald
that set his apart and indeed make him one of the greatest authors that have
ever walked on earth. Fitzgerald could finish only four novels during his
lifetime but even this meager has been able to satiate the hunger of the
literary world and there are unskeptically some veracious reasons behind
it.
The most beautiful thing about the story is that it never gets
old. Fitzgerald's virtuoso story-telling capacity from the fact that his
stories are atemporal. Though set in the Roaring Twenties, yet his story can
find semblance to any time. The sentiments that the book exhumes are perennial
(in the world) and yet Fitzgerald doesn't shy away from laying bare their
fugitive souls. Thorough sedulous plotting the book deals with betrayal,
friendship, love, success, breakups and what not in less than 200 pages...
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Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald |
Moreover, it seems as if every sentence has been ingeniously
pampered, embellished and then interpolated very slyly into the whole realm. At
first reading, many a sentence will appear abstruse, and the more abstruse it
appears, the more profound it gets. Some beautifully contrived sentences like
"Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope" can truly
sum up volumes of philosophical dissertations. It would take an impassive
deadpan to not descry the beauty with which Fitzgerald crafts every single line
and leaves the reader with a deluge of meaning to mull over. The sense of
obscurity that engulfs every single sentence compels us to go even deeper into
this empyreal piece of literature but unfortunately the thirst for more is
never quenched. Though complete in all sense, the incisive coda forsakes us
feeling incomplete in our life and that's the ultimately glory that a writer
can ever achieve.
Besides all this, one more thing that helps us discern it as the
greatest piece of literature is its simplistic plot. There are no convoluted
stories, no serpentine path and no devious tactics and it is truly the abject
simplicity of the book that entices us to search for more. In true simplicity,
Fitzgerald extricated the secrets of life and unravels deep mysteries germane
to human emotions. It is the beauty of his words that crochets a simple story
to appeal to such deep and ingrained attitudes of human behavior.
Interesting, the zeal pertinent to the book doesn't cease till the
last lines, the same last lines that make you want more from Fitzgerald. "So
we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the
past." How much depth and gravity these lines hold is
inexplicable and as a matter of fact, the same profound message is emblazoned
on Fitzgerald's grave.
Certainly, The Great Gatsby can make the literary
bend of your mind go ebullient to make futile efforts to edify the ineffable.
Without a fraction of doubt, it is a one in a million book whose
interpretations will continue to manifest themselves in every culture and
century. It is one of those bright jewels that restore our faith in books and
blessed were those hands who penned this paragon.
Jai Hind, Jai Bharat
Jai Ma Bharti
