The shadows and the light

"The shadows are as important as the light."

-Charlotte Brontë

A time of uncontrollability and stealth

The night is a comforting time for many. It’s a time to wind down, a time to entertain, and a time to prepare for a night of restful sleep. The night is like a dark blanket that wraps one in a sense of security and fatigue. I wish that I could see the night in the same light. However, with the health crisis going on in our world, and having some extra time on my hands, I struggle to shut my mind from stressors after the sun sets. 

I’ve written about having uncontrolled thoughts at night before. My mind seems to work up endlessly pessimistic thoughts in the evening, even when I’m emotionally stable during the day. These mental panics occur most frequently when I have too much time on my hands. The side of me that’s addicted to the drug of busyness feels deprived. It yearns for productivity and the sense of having learned something new when the sun sets and in order to be heard, it causes a rush of 9:00 PM adrenaline that keeps me an extra hour on my laptop. 

At night, I wonder whether I’m doing enough, whether I’ve done enough. I ask myself, have I learned anything new today? I question whether everything I’m doing is really going to help me become the fictitious person I’ve idolized. I grow concerned that life is not going to work out. I worry whether I’ve been productive enough. I try to calculate the hours that I spent doing everything and how much time I’ve wasted. I worry about what I need to do in the upcoming weeks to prepare for XYZ. Overall, I find myself consumed in a lot of questions and concerns that are beyond my control. Perhaps that’s why these thoughts emerge at night, a time of uncontrollability and stealth. 

The night for me up until this point has indicated the end of another day and the end of another opportunity to be productive, learn something new, and do something meaningful. This is why I dislike the ends of the day. Perhaps this is also a wake-up call to accept being comfortable with being uncomfortable. I was reading about this earlier this week in Olivia Fox Cabane’s The Charisma Myth. In fact, being comfortable with being uncomfortable is what allows one to project more kindness and warmth by overlooking the nitty-gritty details and emotions that don’t go our way. At heart, it allows us to be more flexible with ourselves and our own shortcomings without compromising our ability to interact warmly with others. 

I’d like to end with a quote from Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, which caught my attention because of its immediate relatability to my recent experiences with wandering thoughts at night. I read this quote this past week and it stuck with me immensely. 

“It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night is it another thing” -Ernest Hemingway “The Sun Also Rises”

The Great Gatsby

About 4 years ago, I watched the movie the Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio. I was young at the time and didn’t fully understand the estranged, fruitful themes. At a glance, The Great Gatsby is a story about a long-lasting, potent, and noxious love. It’s the type of longing that usually lives in the closets of imaginations for no one dares to speak of such a dangerous romance. Spoiler alert by the way!

__________

I finished the book this past week and it’s not until you see how F. Scott Fitzgerald writes about the characters and their thoughts that the true power of this American Classic materializes. I must say that the movie does a fantastic job capturing the essence of the characters Jay Gatsby, Daisy, and Nick Carraway. It lacks more on the characters of Tom Buchanan and the Wilson’s, who actually play quite a pivotal role in the plot. The Wilsons represent the side of society with which Tom is too ashamed to be associated. They belong to the working class and George Wilson operates a gas station. Tom shows little respect for George Wilson, not only because he sees George as subservient to Myrtle, but because he sees himself as more manly, taking control of Daisy. 

I felt class divisions, or social stratification was a major theme in this novel. It represents a catalyst for Myrtle’s death. George figured Gatsby had driven into his wife without stopping because he was of the upper class. There are many theories for why George shot Gatsby. Some say George shot Gatsby thinking he was having an affair with Myrtle even though it was Tom. Some say George shot Gatsby for revenge. While I think both of those arguments are valid, I think one of Tom’s motivations was to show Gatsby, and those of the upper class, that money doesn’t grant passageway to careless living. I think social stratification at least in part ties George and Gatsby together because it ultimately detains them from the people they love. 

The American Dream is another major theme. Gatsby grew up poor, served in the war, and then went to Oxford for five months. After, he worked in the drug and bootlegging business and within a few years, made enough money to buy a mansion comparable to that of the Buchanan’s, which had taken generations worth of money and work to buy. Tom Buchanan is suspicious of Gatsby’s money and I think he has a right to be since Gatsby seems to come from nowhere with overflowing pockets and a history tied to Tom’s wife. 

However, what’s curious to me is how Gatsby lied about his background. He wasn’t born into a rich family, the impression he projected, nor was he educated at Oxford University. Lying felt like an obligation. When I consider Gatsby and George, they seem more and more similar. In the eyes of the Buchanan’s, who really represent the attitudes of the upper class, neither Gatsby nor George will ever be good enough. Gatsby holds a slight upper hand in gaining acceptance into Daisy’s world because he has (illegally earned) money. But in the end, we learn how futile that money proved to be. Perhaps it was meant to show the strength of class divisions and the true impossibility of the American Dream. Gatsby’s fate is meant to make us question whether the American Dream exists. If it does, would he have been killed still? If it does, would Daisy and Tom, the uber-wealthy, have fleed from all the trouble on Long Island? 

Daisy and Tom’s fleeing symbolizes the injustices we currently face in modern-day. Again, it comes down to this idea of the American Dream and who has access to attaining this goal. Gatsby’s fate and Buchanan’s response is a classic hit and run example of evading responsibility in the modern world. I think of problems of immigration, and how many people continue to wrongly blame immigrants for “stealing American jobs”. And who suffers the beating? The immigrants, the scapegoats, who are simply trying to secure a better life. This is similar to Gatsby, who even after all his hard work building capital and achieving his version of the American Dream, still gets blamed for killing Myrtle even though Daisy had actually hit her in the car that night. Daisy and Tom simply employ the power of their immense wealth to get away from the situation.

________

The Great Gatsby is one of those estranged stories I can’t forget. Even if it lacked the fame of being “The Great Gatsby”, the storyline is so unique and, nevermind that it was written in 1925, touches upon societal issues that persist even in modern-day. F. Scott Fitzgerald has keenly crafted a world where love, class, and revenge ultimately paralyze one intertwined group of people who end up mutually involved in each other’s lives. A timeless classic that successfully touches upon themes well beyond the confined lense of its time. 

What really knocks me out

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it” -JD Salinger from "The Catcher In the Rye"

Stuck at home, I've made it a point to read some classic American literature. In recent years, my nose tends to find itself in the middle of a school textbook over books read for pleasure. Well now's my opportunity to change that. 

I'm almost ashamed of how skimpy my contact with classic literature has been. I think it was the first time that I tried to read Twain in elementary school that I started nudging myself away from classics because I couldn't understand anything he was saying. Time has changed that. Language no longer appears so complex on a page and I have the tools to breakdown complex passages. I'm endeavoring to engage more with classics over this next period of quarantine. They're classics after all and they worked to earn permanent spots on the shelves of American Literature.  

Anyway, the quote above is from The Catcher In the Rye, which I find hilarious by the way. This quote stuck out; I had to go back and reread it to make sure I wasn't reading a book review and it was Salinger himself suddenly changing the tone of the narrative. The main character, Holden, is so cynical anyway I cannot imagine himself actually saying that. Perhaps it's a projection of Salinger himself. 

Regardless, I couldn't agree with Salinger more. It's almost a matter of charisma and connection with the audience. Every laugh Salinger generates is an opportunity for readers to connect with the author; it's a matter of taking a deeper dive into the mind of the reader. Salinger enlivens his character through casual writing, which Holden calls his "lousy" writing for lack of a better vocabulary. In fact, Holde's cynical complaints are one, so relatable, and two, so descriptive that I can't help but imagine a commensurate protuberance of Salinger's own pet peeves and observations into the character. Love, love, love this book so far.