Our book club spent a whole meeting arguing over a single sentence in 'The Great Gatsby'

We were supposed to talk about the whole book, but someone brought up the line 'So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.' One person said it was about hope, another said it was pure sadness, and a third said Fitzgerald was just being fancy. What started as a quick chat turned into a 45 minute debate with people pulling out different copies to compare notes. I even read a blog post from a college professor to try and settle it, but that just made it worse. We never did get to talk about the rest of the book that night. Has your group ever gotten stuck like that on one tiny part?

3 comments

3 Comments

thomas_sanchez26d ago

Honestly that line about boats against the current is the whole point of the book to me. It's not just hope or sadness, it's both at once. Gatsby keeps trying to grab this dream that's already behind him, and that fight is beautiful and stupid and tragic all together. Your book club getting stuck on it for 45 minutes means Fitzgerald did his job. I'd take that over a surface level chat about the plot any day.

shane_park9226d ago

Wait, they actually pulled out different copies to check?

drew_jones3126d ago

Oh man, that reminds me of my buddy's film club... they got totally hung up on the spinning top at the end of "Inception." One guy swore it wobbled, another said it was rock solid, and they spent like an hour watching the clip on repeat, frame by frame. They never even got to talk about the rest of the movie.