One of my most admired works of American literature to date is F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby". Whenever I mention it, George rolls his eyes and bemoans "but it has a sad ending". Okay that's a valid reader response but why does every work of fiction, etc. have to end like a sappy Hallmark movie?
As I was browsing through a borrowed copy on the train in this morning, it struck me that the story is errily similar to the recent week long saga of a now labeled fake Rockefeller who abducted his daughter. He emerged in the early 1990s on the New York scene, bragging about his trust fund left when his parents died in a car crash. When he tried, unsuccessfully to woo a beautiful woman, he went after her identical twin and caught her. They were married ten years and had the one child. Soon, his house of cards started to fall as his wife filed for divorce and asked for sole custody of their daughter.
I don't know who I feel more sorry for? I guess it's ultimately the innocent child. She had no control overly ambitious father and mother who thought she could move out of the country and pay off her ex-husband to relinguish his parental duty. Now you may be saying, what does this have to do with Gatsby?
He spent the entire novel pretending to be someone he wasn't, just to get a woman to fall in love with him. When she quickly wised up and distanced herself, Gastby's actions were simarily destructive as this fake Rockefeller's.
What is the lesson of Gatsby and this fake Rockefeller? Be careful who you associate with. Anyone who claims to be something s/he is not (i.e. multiple idenities).
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