Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" can be described as a big name, ranking second in the world's English novel list, as if people who have not seen it are embarrassed to say that they are a literary youth.
Bill. Gates and Melinda
Let's start with Bill. Gates and Gatsby's little story: Melinda, who was still a product manager at a microsoft business dinner, happened to be with her boss Bill. Gates sat together.
During the chat, Gates talked about "The Great Gatsby" as his favorite novel and strongly appealed to Melinda Amway it. Melinda smiled and replied: I've read it twice.
In the book "Moments of Ascension," Melinda says that the book should be their matchmaker, and guesses that Bill fell in love with her at this moment. Maybe his name is also related to Gatsby, because the original name of Gatsby in the book is Gates.
In fact, many Chinese readers do not take "The Great Gatsby" as a world famous book.
Just like "GREAT" in the title of the book, its literal English translation means "great" or "far-reaching", but it translates to "great".
This inevitably makes people feel that after reading "The Great Gatsby", chinese translators and readers think that Gatsby, a tragic love protagonist of a poor boy chasing a rich woman, loves but can't afford to be praised as "great". But out of sympathy for the infatuated, it is quite embarrassing to give a discounted consolation prize.
The Great Gatsby
Indeed, many people only look at the title of the book, mistakenly think that it is a wealth creation manual success science, and come to the hasty flip after the disappointment: where is there any great Gatsby?
It just tells a clichéd story of a hero saddering a beauty off.
01. The first half of the novel tells the history of a poor boy's failure to fall in love with Bai Fumei.
Pretentious Jamie since childhood. Although Gates is a child of an authentic peasant commoner, living by doing odd jobs around Lake Superior, he is bent on getting ahead.
At the age of 17, Gates met the first noble man in his life, Dan, because of a good deed. Cody, who was subsequently invited to travel the world together. His life on the ship allowed him to learn a lot of things, and he was prepared for the courage and skills to become rich later.
One day six years later, Captain Cody suddenly got tired of drifting and wanted to settle down. Who knew that just a week after the ship docked, he died in women and wine, leaving Gates with a $25,000 inheritance.
It was just that Mrs. Cody made a fuss, and in the end Gates didn't get anything. From then on, he understood that people's hearts are sinister, understood the truth that greed can kill people, and never drank alcohol.
Next Gates enlisted in the army, handsome and handsome in uniform. Like the other officers in Taylor's Battalion, he fell madly in love with eighteen-year-old Daisy: the daughter of the richest man in a white sports car who liked to sit in a white sports car and receive the stars and the moon.
Stills from The Marvelous Gatsby
Gates understands that the poor boy and the goddess are separated by the distance of the milky way, so he makes up the glorious family lineage of the rich second generation, so that Daisy, who has just opened his heart, cannot resist and finally wins the nightingale into his arms.
Just when he was fantasizing about marrying Bai Fumei and going to the peak of his life, the First World War broke out, and even though Lang's concubines were inseparable, they had to hurry away from the war.
Two years later, after the end of the war, Gates retired from the army and went to Oxford for five months of college, so he secretly left school to find his Daisy in Louisville because he could not hold back the pain of lovesickness. The only thing is that the building is empty, and Daisy has married the rich man Tom as his wife.
If the story ends here, it is just a helpless flower, a sad love drama. But the heartbroken Gates is determined to become the rich man Gatsby, to take daisy, who belongs only to his sweetheart.
So the style of the story suddenly changed and became an inspirational drama for a poor boy to struggle and succeed.
02. Shrouded in the aura of the protagonist, Gates successfully completed the gorgeous turn from to Gatsby.
Gates, who returned to New York empty-handed to fight the world, wandered hungry for two days, and finally was salvaged from the gutter by the black market boss Walsam and became his loyal little brother.
Three years later, due to their outstanding performance, they changed from bosses to partner brothers, they sold private liquor together, and then manipulated baseball games, bond stock markets... Gates also made a lot of profits, successfully promoted to the new richest man Gatsby, and embarked on the peak of his life.
The mysterious master at the night feast: Don't be deeply infatuated with me, brother is only a legend.
Sitting on the West Egg Island mansion Gatsby, people have a mysterious and noble family lineage in their eyes, a banquet that spends money like dirt, a luxurious yellow sports car, just like the big plum on the screen that looks like a million years old, a well-dressed gentleman, and the diamond king in the eyes of many beautiful women.
A glance at Gatsby of ten thousand years
But in Gatsby's heart, there is a beautiful person on the water side. On every brightly lit, noisy party night with red men and green women, Gatsby would quietly go outside the house and stare at the green light on the dock on the other side, imagining the joy of reliving old dreams with his goddess Daisy.
Unfortunately, I never forgot it, and there was no echo.
As Fitzgerald said, "There are thousands of kinds of love in this world, but there is never one love that can be repeated." ”
03. Gatsby is still Gatsby, but Daisy is no longer Daisy.
After Gatsby left, Daisy quickly married Tom, who was right at the door, and then let go of Gatsby, who almost eloped.
Mrs. Wilson
Tom, who comes from the famous Caroway family, is rich and wealthy, and is willing to spend thousands of dollars for the bomei Daisy. But after his daughter left, he quickly regained his former playboy nature, and got involved with the vulgar hostess of the auto repair shop, which inevitably made Daisy depressed and very sad.
After three long years of waiting, Gatsby finally gets the chance to see Daisy again: at the house of Daisy's cousin Luke, Gatsby finally meets Daisy, and she is surprised to find herself really golden and affectionate. As a result, the two naturally rekindled their old love.
Gatsby is unaware that his love has long since passed its shelf life.
Because of his humble origins and disgraceful fortune, Gatsby eventually became Daisy's outcast after being beaten back to his original form by Tom. She would rather suffer in a seemingly mysterious marriage than live an adventurous life with the debunked Gatsby and live up to his infatuation.
After Daisy drives Mrs. Wilson to death, in order to clear her responsibility, she shamelessly conspires with Tom to blame Gatsby, and regards Gatsby as a plague god to avoid.
In fact, on the day of the car accident, Gatsby spent the night outside Daisy's house and had made up his mind to put life and death aside and bear everything for the woman he loved.
Gatsby, for the sake of nothingness of love, eventually willingly gave Daisy her life.
Daisy didn't go to his cold, bleak funeral, not even a phone call or a bouquet of flowers, and she and Tom went on a heavy honeymoon overseas.
Daisy, who has aristocratic ancestry in the book, has a sexy voice like a nightingale, like the Siren in Greek mythology to seduce sentient beings. There is a Syrian folk song in my memory, which is very suitable for the ending of this story:
A beautiful girl, a flower, led me to the bottom of the well, cut the rope and left, you, you...
It's not so much that Gatsby loves Daisy as it is about the social status of the famous people she represents.
Simply put, "The Great Gatsby" is a love story of a sword.
Gatsby became rich from black market production, and in the end, risking for love rather than caring about money itself, it is easy to forgive his disgraceful history.
Gatsby regards love as a belief, which is exactly what is remarkable.
He simply and persistently loves the brain, and in the flashy era of paper drunken fans, it is undoubtedly rare in the circle of the rich. Think of Bill a hundred years later, who was once radiant in the eyes of the world. The Gates couple is also divorced, how many people can keep the original intention of love? How not to let people lament that Gatsby's male version of "silly white sweet" is really too rare!
There's a line in the book that day before he died, Nick yelled at Gatsby across the lawn, "They're all bunch of bastards, and they can't compare to you even if they all add up." ”
Many readers think that Gatsby's death is not worth it, and Daisy guards her cheating husband, rejecting handsome, goldy and obsessive men who are willing to die for her is too stupid.
Why did Gatsby wait for the rabbit for two years before he met Daisy?
If Gatsby had been busy earning money for the first three years, the timing was not ripe to understand the lack of confidence to meet his goddess. But the strange thing is that three years later, Gatsby has successfully entered the long island rich circle, he looks up to see Daisy's dock green light, but does not go to the door to personally confess to her, it is strange to relive the dream as soon as possible.
Daisy and Tom had the most grand and grand weddings, and as local celebrities, the couple often appeared in the newspapers. Gai Qibi must have noticed, otherwise how could he buy a house and live across the water from her?
According to the logic of the general story, after Gatsby successfully became a rich man, he should take the wealth he owned to recover Daisy and recover everything he could not get in the past.
The reason why he is obsessed with Daisy is, in the final analysis, it is only a shallow vanity, but also too humble love: the poor boy has become rich and worthy of the goddess, look, I am really rich second generation, did not lie to you!
Gatsby buys the mansion across the river from Daisy, sings and parties night after night, bent on creating a fake scene of a chance encounter, just to prove that he is charming and can defeat all love enemies - Daisy has never loved anyone else, only him.
Because of his inferiority, Gatsby tried to prove himself by showing off his wealth. So, instead of saying that Gatsby loves the woman Daisy, it is better to love the social status of the famous family she represents.
Since the ancient love can not be retained, the original only routine deep. However, Gatsby's elaborate "Daisy has never loved anyone else, only herself", this fantasy does not stand the test of reality.
Gatsby is a vanity-filled youth who takes back Daisy's love as a sign of entering high society.
Day by day, Gatsby looks forward to meeting his old love, and loves the imaginary Daisy, a goddess who is held high by the stars and the moon. He had premeditated the illusion that he had millions of possessions and that the two were in the right place, convincing young Daisy that he was capable of taking care of himself and being happy.
Gatsby knew that his access to Daisy's house was purely accidental, and he was extremely preying on what he could get—and finally took possession of Daisy, at first just wanting to have fun in time, and then withdrew.
But getting and having it is not the same thing.
I don't know how many men have loved Daisy, raised her value, made him excited by it, and unconsciously devoted himself to the pursuit of an ideal:
If she is happily married, that is all there; if she is unhappy in life, be her knight and march to save her.
It turns out that Gatsby finds out that Daisy doesn't need him to save at all.
It is inevitable to remind people of the fact that in Anai's novel "The Great River Goes East", Yang Tour, a self-employed individual who is one of the "Three Musketeers", has always wanted to see her first love Dai Fengjiao after some hard work and become an upstart - she went with the "fallen grandfather" at the beginning, if she saw the brilliance after her own development, the downcast people must be ashamed of themselves, in order to save the face that was abandoned.
What Yang Guanwan did not expect was that he saw it, but Dai Fengjiao had found a richer object, and his little life was more moist than his, but it made him messy in the wind...
Perhaps this is what life really looks like: the woman of her heart has become a wife, and although the days are not as glamorous as they seem, they are not in the situation of the fallen princess who needs to be saved by her predecessor.
So, there's really nothing remarkable about Gatsby other than wishful thinking!