F. Scott Fitzgerald
Dear John--A great, bittersweet movie and book (though I have not read it yet) which really parallels Gatsby and his story with Daisy. In The Great Gatsby, Jay and Daisy had been sweethearts when they were younger and were really in love. However, Jay had to go off in the army and left her behind while he successfully served in the Great War. Just as John arrived home to find the love of his life married to someone else, Gatsby came back home to find that Daisy had moved on, married Tom Buchanan, and had a beautiful daughter. This was devastating to both men, but it also gave Gatsby something to strive and work toward: getting her back. In order to get Daisy's love back, he felt that he needed to become very wealthy and prove to her that he could support her both emotionally and physically. Presently in the novel, Gatsby has achieved nearly everything he wanted, yet he still desires Daisy, so Nick invites her over for a tea that Gatsby just happens to attend. It was a bittersweet reunion because she was still married to Tom and they could not openly be together, but they did have a nice time and renewed certain feelings toward each other. Fitzgerald's writing in this scene was often very beautiful. One particular sentence stood out to me: "He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room" (Fitzgerald, page 89). I love Nick's view of his friend's romance and the way Fitzgerald describes it with such beautiful diction.
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