I think about The Great Gatsby a lot. And by a lot, I mean that I could probably read and reread this book only and have a fine understanding of the entire world. Fitzgerald was one of the great ones; his insecurity and brokenness gave him the insight to write the perfectly imperfect character.
I don’t know what it is about the last lines of the book, but since reading it for the first time in 12th grade, I haven’t been able to shake them.
I think it captures the spirit of the book in perfect prose. For the few hundred pages before these lines, Gatsby had been crafting and destroying himself, trying to regain his past “Beating against the current.” I love the wind-out-of-your-sails brand of hopelessness it evokes.
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning– So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”