In the summer of 2007, I lived in Italy with locals for a month. That month was the best of my life. I ate better, shopped better, had more fun, and just lived better. Essentially, I became an Italian at heart.

I believe that Italian culture is superior to that of America in every way.

I believe there is something to be said for a well tailored, slim fitting dark Armani suit and crazily yet fashionably colored shirt and tie. Americans may call this vanity, but Italians take pride in how they look. Styles start in Italy and then proceed to make their way to America two or three years later. And yet most of the youth here in America aren’t aware of the roots of their own trends. This kind of personal expression through clothing is a staple of Italian culture and is quite obviously better than America’s.

I believe there is something to be said for such a value as the Italians place on family, friends, and history. In many places in Italy you could simply show up unannounced at your buddy’s doorstep and you would be invited in to eat. Italians care about family and sticking together. How many of America’s families are close-knit like an Italian family? Not many. They eat together. Fathers and sons work on cars together all the time. And don’t get me started about Italian cars. There is no sound in the world like that of a Ferrari revving its engine.

I believe there is something to be said for an enormous authentic Italian pizza. Like a “Pizza Visuvio” in Naples, the original home of pizza. Or a calzone. Italians place a high value on food, and rightfully so. They aren’t afraid to send a dish back if for no other reason besides that they don’t like it. And meals are big events in Italy. The average meal in our nation (A “Fast Food Nation”) is ridiculously low compared to Italy. There, it is not uncommon for a meal to stretch to two or three hours, or more. As a result Italians are most often much healthier then Americans. They eat real food- food with real ingredients. Not food injected with hormones and chemicals or processed in a dirty factory. Their food contains real fresh ingredients, and it tastes better than I could describe with words. It’s like a partito in bocca, a party in your mouth.

In short, Italian culture is superior because of Armani, Ferrari, and pizza con carne. Italians know how to live much better than Americans. Questo Credo.  This I believe.

Here it is, the last blog post:

Character/ American Dream-After changing my clothes I went next door and found Mr. Gatz walking up and down excitedly in the hall. His pride in his son and in his son’s possessions was continually increasing and now he had something to show me.

“Jimmy sent me this picture.” He took out his wallet with trembling fingers. “Look there.”

It was a photograph of the house, cracked in the corners and dirty with many hands. He pointed out every detail to me eagerly. “Look there!” and then sought admiration from my eyes. He had shown it so often that I think it was more real to him now than the house itself.

“Jimmy sent it to me. I think it’s a very pretty picture. It shows up well.”

Here we meet Gatsby’s father for the first time. His name is Gatz, actually. Anyway, in this passage i couldn’t help but notice how proud he is of his son. It was the same way when he first walked in to that great mansion of his. It seems to take away from the sheer darkness of the way the book is ending. Think about it. Gatsby doen’t get Daisy, he gets killed. That is quite a powerful ending. But Mr. Gatz is a random but well-placed bright spot in the story. He is sort of living the American Dream vicariously through his son. His son was helping him out financially apparently. I suppose that suold be part of the American Dream as well- being able to take care of your family financially. That no doubt probably brought Gatsby great happiness, to buy that house for his dad. It appears that his dad has been happy. I personally think that comes from how he doesn’t appear to really care too much about money, at least for himself…

Color/ American Dream:

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow 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.

Now we can sort of put the pieces together. The green light represented so much. Remember that we first see Gatsby with his arms reached out towards the light. That light represented Daisy and his dream, his American Dream. And so the book really comes full circle with these final few paragraphs. Fitzgerald, through Nick, compares the green light to a future that eludes us year by year. This is a commentary from Fitzgerald as to how, in many cases, the American Dream is unattainable. It is something that will never be enough once you get caught up in it. That’s how our “boat” is against the “current”. The deck is stacked against those with the American Dream. Think, too, that the two characters in the book chasing the American Dream the most end up dead.

It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of the windows down-stairs, filling the house with gray-turning, gold-turning light. The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a slow, pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool, lovely day.

It seems so strange that the gray and gold light are both affecting the house at the same time. The gray conveys a strong image and contributes to the empty feeling inside the house. It is so big, but there is a lack of luster or sparkle about it. Gatsby has gone to great lengths to make it golden inside: he wants to give the impression of old  money. So, of course, the gold turning light is appropriate. He has spent all this time, effort, and money all with the object of getting Daisy and so the gray light sort of hints at the vanity of it all, because, after all, she doesn’t end up siding with Gatsby.

American Dream-

It was nine o’clock when we finished breakfast and went out on the porch. The night had made a sharp difference in the weather and there was an autumn flavor in the air. The gardener, the last one of Gatsby’s former servants, came to the foot of the steps.

“I’m going to drain the pool to-day, Mr. Gatsby. Leaves’ll start falling pretty soon, and then there’s always trouble with the pipes.”

“Don’t do it to-day,” Gatsby answered. He turned to me apologetically. “You know, old sport, I’ve never used that pool all summer?”

Fitzgerald pokes fun at the ridiculousness of some of the material things the rich are so concerned about. Here Gatsby has this great pool right there on his property, and yet he hasn’t used it all summer. As we learned in the previous chapter, it got pretty hot that summer. So why does he need a pool if he doesn’t use it? Many people of that class have things and get things just for appearance- just to have them, for show. Throughout the book I believe Fitzgerald has been saying that the American Dream perhaps shouldn’t be so overtly materialistic. Maybe it should be more about family, friends, and happiness. After all, Gatsby is really short on friends and at this point, we are not even aware of any family. He is really short on happiness due to the emptiness he feels without the companionship of Daisy.

Character- George Wilson has gone through a lot of crazy stuff recently. He has learned of his wife’s affair, but then she is killed by a hit and run car accident. In this passage, George talks with Mikaelis even though he is pretty looney and foggy from the recent events. He is fascinated by the big eyes of the TJ Eckelburg advertisement. He says that they remind him of god, and how “God sees everything”. He tells Michaelis that he told Myrtle that God knows what she had been doing. The way Fitzgerald describes through Nick’s future knowledge the dialoguee and events, we know that Wilson is gonna blow soon. He is completely crazy. Pretty soon, he ends up tracing the car and finding the way to Gatsby’s house. Then he kills Gatsby. And himself. Personally, from the last few paragraphs I didn’t understand that Gatsby was dead. I thought that Gatsby ended up killing George. Perhaps Fitzgerald created a desire in his readers- so that they wanted to believe he was still alive. Either way, the complicated “beginning of the end” of the story was masterfully done.

Color: Daisy and Jordan both are wearing white dresses in this chapter. “Jordan’s fingers, powdered white over their tan, rested for a moment in mine.” In those days (the twenties) it was fashionable to be pale because it meant you spent a lot of time inside, not outside working in the sun. That’s opposite of what is fashionable now. Jordan golf’s outside a lot so she has to hide her tan skin beneath a lot of make-up. This is sort of demonstrative of how a lot of people in this class try to hide who they are. This is quite possibly an opinion Fitzgerald is trying to convey.

The white dress on daisy is appropriate because it is a common, neutral, indiscriminant color. When the big argument takes place, Daisy doesn’t really choose between Tom and Gatsby. If she had been wearing gold we might have seen her more on the side of Tom. If her dress had been green, we may see her more with Gatsby.

Character: “There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind and as we drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His wife and his mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping precipitately from his control.” This forshadows the coming confrontation in this chapter. Tom always appears  strong and stable, in control. Now that he’s losing control, combined with the fact that it’s the hottest day of the year; we know something crazy could happen. “Precipitately” was a great word to describe the feeling of losing control. I don’t know why, but i kind of feel bad for Tom at this point. It’s quite a task for Fitzgerald to elicit that emotion from audience members for a mean, hypocritical, fake dude who cheats on his wife. Daisy tells Tom to open up the whiskey so he won’t seem to stupid to himself. Later his tone is described as having “a husky tenderness”.

American Dream: “Thirty- the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.” The way Fitzgerald describes Nick’s situation betray’s Fitzgerald’s opinion of most rich people. Of course, Nick isn’t ridiculously rich like Tom or Gatsby, but nonetheless he has money and could be argued to be living the American Dream. But when he turns thirty he looks ahead to loneliness and boredom. This is the state of many rich people- they don’t have many real friends, people who really care about them. Fitzgerald no doubt realizes that.

“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried increduously. “Why of course you can!” He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. “I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said, nodding detetrminedly. “She’ll see.” He talked a lot about the past and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.

This passage is important to the development of Gatsby. We see now that he is a little bit naive in his quest to regain Daisy’s love. He thinks he can repeat the past exactly. But this is a ridiculous notion, especially considering that when she loved him he was a completely different person- he wasn’t part of her class. Earlier in the chapter Nick gives us some information about Gatsby’s past. We learn that his real name is James Gatz but he changed it to Jay Gatsby when he came aboard the Tuolomee, Dan Cody’s boat. Setting foot aboard that yacht was sort of like stepping into or climbing aboard a new life- one of luxury and adventure. From there he went on to become a whole new person.

One thing I have noticed in this book is that bright, rich colors like gold and green that are often used in association with the wealthy are contrasted with grey a lot. Grey seems to signify old, boring, empty things. It sort of has a dirty connotation. I thought it was strange that Fitzgerald described Cody as a grey florid man. But he goes on to say that he had a “hard empty face” and that he was a “pioneer debauchee”, so perhaps he is drained of the normal brightness and exuberance normally coming with wealth. Also, Daisy pulls out “a little gold pencil” for Tom. Its crazy- even her pencils are luxurious and represent her old money. It furthers in showing that her family is defintitely the upper echelon of high class.

At the party in chapter six there are many celebrities. There is an actress and her director and a small time producer and “faces of people you’ve heard about”. Fitzgerald sort of makes fun of the whole celebrity fascination through Tom. He doesn’t recognize anyone there and he tries not to be labeled as the polo player. The American Dream of becoming famous or wealthy is kind of vain and this is an example of how many times people who are famous kind of wish they weren’t- like Tom. Also, so many people at Gatsby’s party are drunk. This is a means for Fitzgerald to make fun of them because people act ridiculous when they are drunk. The table Nick was at was “particularly tipsy”. What is more, the same table had gotten tipsy two weeks earlier.