The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Recently, I read a book entitled The Great Gatsby. This is a book that highly recommended by many people, including my teacher in Short Story Class. The Great Gatsby is generally conceded to be F. Scott Fitzgerald's finest novel and one of the key books of the twentieth century. I like the story and enjoy the plot of the book. Yet, I can not grasp the gist of the story after finishing the whole book. Sigh! Why? What are the important points in this book that made it so famous? The only way to find out the answer is read another book entitled Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Great Gatsby which I am currently reading.

What I want to say in today's blog is that in the Interpretations book, there is a letter writen by Fitzgerald to his daughter two years before his death. In that letter, Fitzgerald judged his early life and marriage. As a wife of a man who is impassioned in doing research, I have a deeper thought after reading the letter. Here, I quote the paragraph from the book:

"When I was your age I lived with a great dream. The dream grew and I learned how to speak of it and make people listen. Then the dream divided one day when I decided to marry you mother after all, even though I knew she was spoiled and meant no good to me. I was sorry immediately I had married her, but being patient in those days, made the best of it and got to love her in another way. You came along and for a long time we made quite a long of happiness out of our lives. But I was a man divided -- she wanted me to work too much for her and not enough for my dream. She realized too late that work was dignity, and the only dignity, and tried to atone for it by working herself, but it was too late and she broke and is broken forever."

I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.
~Oliver Goldsmith~