The movie series, continued!
Spoiler alert! If you have not yet watched some version of the Nutcracker, or Big Hero 6, Star Trek Into Darkness, Edward Scissorhands, Into the Woods, The Great Gatsby, Interstellar, Paddington, The Shawshank Redemption, or Captain America: The Winter Soldier, you likely will not wish to have often key elements of their plots/significance ruined by the posts in this series. Watch the movies and then come back if you’d like 🙂
Owing to the fact that I have very thankfully been on spring break, I have finally been able to do a movie marathon! Since I’ve watched no less than nine movies within the past week, I will probably have two (or maybe three-depends how much I write about Interstellar :p) separate posts concerning this marathon. xD It’s been an exciting week, but it’s nearly time for it to end, as school starts back up on Monday.
Spoiler alert! If you have not yet watched some version of the Nutcracker, or Big Hero 6, Star Trek Into Darkness, Edward Scissorhands, Into the Woods, The Great Gatsby, Interstellar, Paddington, The Shawshank Redemption, or Captain America: The Winter Soldier, you likely will not wish to have often key elements of their plots/significance ruined by the following posts. Watch them and then come back if you’d like 🙂
Without further ado, the movies! Continue reading
Hello there! *waves* Er, sorry about the unintended hiatus. Hrm. Now that we’re essentially done with true content learning in bio and chem (just review from here on out, man), hiatuses should not be as frequent. Most likely.
At any rate, as of tonight I’m still making progress toward most of my resolutions, an extremely pleasant surprise! Things were getting spotty last week as I felt particularly apathetic the first few days in March, but I’m feeling much more motivated now. Though, no, not enough to be working on my history and math projects instead of this. ^_^
On another note, as part of my severe lack of motivation last week, I got fed up with treating reading as a homework assignment and focusing primarily on the assignments I get from class. Partly out of a sense of rebellion and partly out of a yearning desire to get back to the good ol’ days of reading purely for the sake of reading and enjoying it, I decided a few days ago to pick up The Great Gatsby again! It was a pleasant surprise to have not only remembered some key elements but also to be reminded about other aspects (like how wonderful the quotes are) and be left wondering about some new insights. That is what I love most about books–there’s always something I miss the first, or the second, or the fifth time around, so that every single time I read a book, something new jumps out at me. It’s incredible and exhilarating and miraculous, and it never gets old.
This time I read Gatsby, I purposely slowed myself down (often, particularly with school-assigned texts, I tend to rush through the reading, either because it is an extremely action-filled plot and I avidly want to know what happens next, or because I want to get a horridly dreadful reading over with) to be able to savor the words on each page. It was unexpectedly nice, taking the time to (attempt to) puzzle out what Fitzgerald wrote: what does it mean, the frequent emphasis of blue–from Gatsby’s gardens to brittle leaves to smoke to someone’s mood–and distinctions between yellow (dresses, car, girls), silver, gold? (ahahaha perhaps my English classes have not all been useless, then…) Furthermore, the repetition of ‘ghost’ and ‘grave’ and related words (the first incidence of which appears to occur by the third (!) page of the novel) certainly gives a darker undertone to the superficially bright, loud happenings of America’s Roaring ’20s and hints at much more ominous things to come, including Gatsby’s own fate…
And then there is the matter of vision. Clear vision, obstructed vision, appearing like, seeing, watching a crowd, peering through spectacles or glasses, wearing sunglasses to block off others’ views of oneself, not looking directly at someone, gazing right into someone’s eyes, and of course, “the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg…blue and gigantic,” all-seeing, all-judging, all-knowing. But perhaps most chilling of all is Nick’s avowal that afterwards, the East was “haunted” for him, “distorted” beyond his eyes’ ability to correct.
However, what stuck with me the most after this reading of Gatsby was the idea of loyalty and who, in the end, is truly faithful. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald presents us with seemingly incessant examples of infidelity–Tom not only having a mistress, but also strutting her about so obviously that Daisy clearly knows and is uncomfortable with it; Myrtle scorning her husband’s love for opportunities to squander her lover’s riches; the poor puppy Myrtle was insistent on buying whining pitifully, forgotten in a haze of smoke and drugs and chaos and incoherence; Jordan Baker purportedly (and in Nick’s opinion and mine, certainly) cheating in that golf tournament; Daisy not waiting for Gatsby to return from his wartime duties and time in England; and Nick ultimately becoming disgusted with the lot of them, those “careless people” who “smashed up things and creatures” and people, turning his back on his cousin and his acquaintance from college and his very short-lived girlfriend to stubbornly support Gatsby all the way to the end. This last example of what some would call “turncoating” in fact pairs Nick with the only character in the entire fricking book who stays faithful and true–watching over Daisy to make sure Tom doesn’t attack her or such like after their attempted escapade failed; still desperately waiting for just one more call from the love of his life the next day; having worked and worked to be able to bring his passion and dream for years at long last within reach again–the two of them defiantly countering the whole cast of remaining shallow personas.
Indeed, rarely even when reading such thought-provoking books do I get so involved with the characters’ emotions, a testament to the effectiveness of Fitzgerald’s writing–I felt a rather vindictive pleasure when I read that Nick “began to have a feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby and [him] against them all.” This is what I want a book to do. I want it to make me stop and think–not with every other word, because that fastidiousness just takes the enjoyment out of it, but not too little or what is even the point of writing/reading so shallow a book?–about not just the concrete events of said book but also the abstract extensions of it, like how far I’ll go to try to fulfill my own dreams and whether I’ll make the judgment call to treat so-and-so like a complete stranger, a passing acquaintance, or a true friend. It’s even better if I also become so drawn into the story that I start forming strong opinions about each of the characters and who I side with and why. If within a hundred pages an author still can’t make me care more than passingly about a character’s fate (like Okonkwo’s great fall in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart–I was coolly surprised for a minute or two before I shrugged and promptly dismissed the entire novel), then that book quite frankly was not worth the effort of reading, personally. Thankfully, this was not the case with Great Gatsby, and I certainly look forward to wondering about and restoring that pure, innocent belief [para.] in my own green light, the enchanting mystery and enticing allure of a future which year by year recedes before us. It’s eluded us until now, but that’s okay, because tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow “we will [indeed] 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.”
Methods in my Madness 