By the Narrow Gate

By the Narrow Gate

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.  For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13-14). Many think of a funeral as a remembrance of the deceased, of who they were and what they stood for, that a funeral is for the deceased. That is true to some extent, however it is a last gift to the lives a person had touched, in order that they may think of the good of the deceased, to remember them one last time as they were. Gatsby, the man with the spirit of the pioneers, of the pilgrims, and of those who dreamed of a land called America, is dead. And all who are left to mourn his passing are his father, a man who loves books, Gatsby’s servants, and one outsider. The funeral Gatsby is given mourns not only the man, but the Spirit of America, constantly seeking opportunity, expansion, and second chances. Seeking these things after the atrocities of the Last Great War, however, lead to the subtle intrusion of evil into one’s dreams and actions which are corrupted by laziness, carelessness, and obsession. They poisoned the Spirit of America’s search for the dream, and in turn, killed them. Fitzgerald, who participates in his novel in the guise of all knowing outsider Nick Carraway, watched the Greatest Nation on Earth as an outsider in Paris, and as he wrote his book, he was watching its funeral be ignored.

    Opportunity is part of the founding of America; the belief that if one has it in them to do great things and is willing to work hard enough for it, one should have the opportunity to do so. The only thing that can counter the more than three thousand miles of opportunity is laziness, the kind where honest and hard work such as getting a second job or doing work others are not willing to do is forgotten in light of the wide and easy path. Criminal activity such as bootlegging, a fact about Gatsby given to us by an angry Tom when he says that he “ ‘picked him out for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn't far wrong.’ ” (Fitzgerald 118), breeds that sort of laziness because it blurs the line between right and wrong. Breaking the law is not the honest work which America was built upon. Gatsby’s moral laziness in working for Meyer Wolfshiem chokes his opportunity. He has the potential to succeed, but instead gives it up for a quick buck and dishonest work. Fitzgerald uses Wolfshiem’s corruption of Gatsby’s dream to show that evil can come in many forms, and most of the time one does not know or does not care that it has them in his grasp until it is too late. Once the deed is done and the dream is corrupted, Laziness does not even bother to look back and instead moves on. It won’t come to its victim’s funeral. It doesn’t come to the funeral of the real America. It simply moves on to continue corrupting the little America that is left.

    Keeping on the straight and narrow is no easy task; especially when one’s want to expand is immediately brought down by carelessness. Expansion is doing better than one was given or giving one’s children a better life, which are good things, but when one starts letting their misdeeds fall by the moral wayside, the dream and America start to become crippled. Fitzgerald uses Jordan and the Buchanans to illustrate his point that America doesn’t stand, can’t stand, if her sons and daughters enter through the wide gate. If her own children cannot care about the people they hurt, then the American Dream becomes evil. “She was dressed to play golf and I remember her looking like a good illustration” (151). Your literary Fitzgerald that is Nick Carraway, the all knowing outsider, says that Jordan is fake. She is only an illustration, an impossible dream for people to seek but never find. She has been at Gatsby’s parties, and along with her accomplices, has sunk her claws into his life, and just like Laziness, she and her companions refuse to attend Gatsby’s funeral, even though they have left him as careless as Nick describes the Buchanans to be. “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (153). Their carelessness affected Gatsby and the American Spirit Fitzgerald made him to be, causing him to be reckless and spend money to impress a person he could never have. He broke the law, and became a bootlegger with connections to the mob in order to try and reach his dream, which had become crippled by his carelessness. America and her dream were being choked by Laziness and crippled by Carelessness, yet neither even bothered to come to the funeral.

    A second chance is every man’s dream at one time or another. Maybe with a lover or a job opportunity or maybe with poor life choices. Pilgrims, debtors, pioneers, outcasts, they all came for that second chance. A possibility to start over in life when they couldn’t find it elsewhere. The second chance was Gatsby’s hope, his dream, his everything. World War I had killed his first chance. He needed the second one. Gatsby craved that second chance so much it became his obsession.  He let his morals fall, connected with the mob, and smuggled alcohol just to have her, the woman he obsessed over so much that Nick, our author in disguise, “wouldn’t have been surprised to see the sinister faces, the faces of “Wolfshiem’s people”, behind him [Gatsby]” (125). Obsession has changed America so much that Fitzgerald is unable to recognize her without all the evil. Obsession over money, cars, love, and keeping up with the Joneses, has made the dream into a disturbing thing that is sucking the life out of America and eventually after a night spent in obsession and alcohol, kills her. America, Gatsby, the Dream, and the American Spirit, are all dead. The evils of the War to End All Wars have destroyed it. And obsession has died along with America, unable to attend the funeral.

    For everyone who did not come to the funeral, there were people there. Nick was there, (Fitzgerald is organizing a funeral within and with his novel). George Washington, the Father of America, was there alongside Nick. Owl Eyes, the man who loves libraries and wears glasses is also in attendance as Benjamin Franklin in disguise, the man who pushed for America for many years before it came into fruition. The rest of the attendees were made up of Gatsby (America)’s servants, which could easily be the men and women who have served this great nation and her dream. And Fitzgerald says that their message of continuing on, of “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (154), of soldiering on despite the odds against them, is dead. And they are watching the dream they sacrificed so much for, even died to protect, be ignored at its funeral.

    The America many people know today was just beginning to exist in the ‘First Modern Age’. Materialism, and its evils that come along with the affairs of the world, were just beginning to corrupt America. But the ‘flaming youth’ and those suffering from the effects of the Last Great War, did not care because “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!” was the attitude. Fitzgerald saw these things coming into play. And with one of his best known novels, he creates a message of despair: a funeral for America, one killed by Laziness (Wolfshiem), Carelessness (Tom, Daisy, and Jordan), and Obsession represented by Gatsby himself (for America needed the spark from its obsession with second chances, expansion, and opportunity to even form). “America is dying!” Fitzgerald shouts to his countrymen. “ ‘Crown thy good with brotherhood!’ How can God do that when there is no good left in you?” His desperate plea as America takes its time, a decade almost, to crash and burn with seemingly no hope for repair, is to wake up! The evils people were, and still are, doing for material things were destroying what made America who she was. His message still rings clear. Keep on the straight and narrow, or even this materialistic America with the few that still believe in the true dream will decay. And the Greatest Nation on Earth will fade. The way to the dream is not easy. The path is hard that leads to life. But the last stronghold for opportunity, expansion, and second chances is dying. So stop living with obsession over the material, and start living again. Or the American dream dies.