Gatsby Analysis

Fitzgerald comments on the American way of life, reminiscing about events he couldn't possibly have been present at, evaluating the course humanity has collectively chosen to pursue (by living in and indulging on what this country has to offer). The intentionally evasive way he writes leaves his over-all purpose open to debate. We have left our humanity "somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night." His speaking of the all-natural, beautiful land-mass, landed on and corrupted by the invaders ("the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes..."), leads readers to believe that with the de-naturalization we wreak upon this "new world," converting it into a "great country," such as "Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house..." the moon refuses to illuminate us. Our natural satellite, a natural occurence, cannot, will not, brighten the fields of this nation; once teeming with earth-born life -- now devastated by the manipulations man conducts. This, especially, because mankind has learned how to create artificial light (thus, the absence of the moon)(and how to make our own food ("the dark fields" (containing nothing but ourselves))). "A fresh, green breast of the new world" is an opportunity to be profited from in the conniving hands of man. "The inessential houses began to melt away," until the realization that we have indeed corrupted what was once pure becomes clear; inessential because nature is the natural safe haven. "For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the prescence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder." The transition man underwent when he arrived to this place was from the classical world of minor crimes to the modern world of death, destruction, pollution -- advanced technology, with which we enslave the world itself. The aesthetic contemplation He (mankind) felt was a wondering of all the changes we could force upon our new home to accomodate for our evolving needs (ridding ourselves of what is no longer required (things natural)). This, long ago, was the last time man will ever be able stare in awe at beauty and possibilities; beauty to be harvested, ripped from whence it came, and possibilities we can create and force upon the ground we stand. We arrived at this country to make a new home, but the advances we have made as a race have blinded us to our true cause (lost long ago because of rapid modernization), leading us to soil the natural beauty, to waste our lives worrying about the trivial. The American Dream is like courting a whore, who was once a marvelous maiden, but has become our sultry harlot, able to suck the life from the tyrants (United Statesians) that made her Her. We fight futilely against what we have created, complaining all the time, never knowing anything -- or why.