The Music of Words in The Great Gatsby

     It's too hard.  You'll never understand this.  And you shouldn't try.  That's what the new dumbed-down edition of The Great Gatsby conveys to students.  It's a re-write of Fitzgerald's masterwork that removes exquisite expressions and reflective observations that impart richness and density to the prose.  Here's a cogent and incisive account of this travesty by Roger Ebert. 
    I concur with almost everything Ebert says in his piece, with one exception.   "When I read it the first time, I certainly missed some of the nuances, but I didn't stumble over any of the words."  I doubt that Ebert's memory serves him well here.  His first reading of Gatsby was a long time ago as it was for many of us.  There are challenging words in the novel.  Words that are not part of common parlance and unlikely to be grasped from context.  Here are some examples.

meretricious (term one character in the novel uses to describe another); pasquinade (used by Nick in a description of the aftermath of Gatsby’s murder); ulster (used as part of a description of Gatsby's father's attire when he arrives for the funeral); pandered and commensurate (not so much for their denotation but for what they mean on the last pages where they appear) 

   When I taught Gatsby, we would pause on unfamilar words and take the time to look them up (what a concept!).   Expanding one's vocabulary is a to-be-expected benefit from reading notable novels.  The Great Gatsby is also an auditory book, one that directs our attention to sound as well as sense.  Thus the famous concluding coda proved to be apt material for a section of a test that I entitled THE WRITER'S EAR: THE RIGHT WORD IN THE RIGHT PLACE.  Here's a sample of the layout I used.

Reproduced below are some extracts from the exquisite conclusion to The Great Gatsby with three variant phrases at key points.  Underline the phrase that is Fitzgerald’s.
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   Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound.  And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for

                                   native settlers’
                                   Dutch sailors’            eyes--a
                                   alert clear

fresh, green breast of the new world. 

   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

     faint hope of promise                rolled on under the night.
     deep sounds of discord                  

     Gatsby believed in the green light,. . .  It eluded us then, but that’s no matter--tomorrow we will  

               try harder to overcome our limits

               run faster, stretch out our arms farther
               find the missing needed dream
 

. . .  And one fine morning---

  So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly

into the past

to our first hope
by the green light

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       So an important dimension of learning how to read The Great Gatsby is learning how to hear it.  Knowing the dictionary rendering of literary vocabulary moves you only partway down the road of understanding.  Sense is served by sound, tone, pace, rhythm, sonority and what is tellingly not stated as well as what is voiced. A complex gestalt of all of these elements is what makes interpretation possible and necessary.  And interpreting a work of art is a continuing process that changes as we encounter it in new contexts.  Without interpretation, without readers who engage with the paradoxes, ambiguities and tensions in a text there is no way for the book to bloom in the world.  That end will not be attained by stealing from The Great Gatsby the substance of its content or the music of its form.