MIKE: You're alive! I was beginning to worry about you after not hearing from you for a few days. I thought you had, perhaps, been abducted. And then BAM! Two blog posts. Inspirational to say the least.
You asked two questions.
I provide two answers.
A few thoughts. First about chapter two. I find it interesting that you still find Amory tolerable. I know it isn't necessary to like a character but it sure is helpful to find some commonality between myself and the 2D personality. Yes, Amory has his 'eyes-wide-open approach' but he's not just a passive voice in these stories. He IS the story and his carelessness makes it difficult for me to appreciate him. Fitzgerald's purpose? Maybe he's coming to terms with the shallowness of his life and perhaps that's the real point of the strange ending of chapter three. But he's still reckless. In The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway says,
As for the bizarre ghost sighting. It seems like a mental break down (he's delicate, after all) but it might be a mental reorganization instead. However, Fitzgerald writes, "...it never occurred to him that he was delirious or drunk. He had a sense of reality such as material things could never give him." This comes just a few pages after Monsignor Darcy writes that Amory should beware of classifying people and so far, that's all he's done. I think he's fed-up with going through the motions of what seems meaningless. I find it interesting that the ghost looks like Dick Humbird, another careless person who winds up dead. Maybe Amory realizing his mortality?
I think we can almost be guaranteed a different Amory in the future. In literature, whenever a character is rained on or falls into a pool of water or is sprayed with a hose...whenever a character gets wet, the author is signifying baptism. As Amory leaves his New York and steps into a taxi Fitzgerald writes the most uninspiring and simple sentence of the book, "It was raining torrents." I don't think there is any way he leaves this four-word-simple-sentence as a standalone when he could easily have weaved the rain into another sentence. I think Amory is changed when he arrives in Princeton. I guess we'll find out in chapter four, right?
You asked two questions.
- What does it mean that Amory "never succeeded in giving (the experience) an appropriate value?"
- What does it mean that it haunts him for three years afterward? What happens in that three years?
I provide two answers.
- I don't know. Not a clue.
- I think the haunting is foreshadow of what is to come. I think we're given a preview of subsequent chapters.
A few thoughts. First about chapter two. I find it interesting that you still find Amory tolerable. I know it isn't necessary to like a character but it sure is helpful to find some commonality between myself and the 2D personality. Yes, Amory has his 'eyes-wide-open approach' but he's not just a passive voice in these stories. He IS the story and his carelessness makes it difficult for me to appreciate him. Fitzgerald's purpose? Maybe he's coming to terms with the shallowness of his life and perhaps that's the real point of the strange ending of chapter three. But he's still reckless. In The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway says,
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made...Just before Amory "scribbled his honor pledge on the cover," Fitzgerald writes, "Most of them were so stupid or careless that they wouldn't admit when they didn't understand, and Amory was of the latter." Amory and Gatsby and Tom and Daisy and everyone in that social class in the 1920s was careless. I don't think Fitzgerald wants us to like them. And I think this raises a fascinating concept. The Great Gatsby and to a larger degree, TSoP, are both semi-autobiographical. Fitzgerald IS Amory. How can he want us to detest him so badly? I feel like most authors hide behind their characters and make the characters likable so as to affirm the insecurities of the author. This isn't the case with Fitzgerald. He is the careless class and he writes about how destructive they are and yet he continues to live that life for the next twenty years. I don't get it.
As for the bizarre ghost sighting. It seems like a mental break down (he's delicate, after all) but it might be a mental reorganization instead. However, Fitzgerald writes, "...it never occurred to him that he was delirious or drunk. He had a sense of reality such as material things could never give him." This comes just a few pages after Monsignor Darcy writes that Amory should beware of classifying people and so far, that's all he's done. I think he's fed-up with going through the motions of what seems meaningless. I find it interesting that the ghost looks like Dick Humbird, another careless person who winds up dead. Maybe Amory realizing his mortality?
I think we can almost be guaranteed a different Amory in the future. In literature, whenever a character is rained on or falls into a pool of water or is sprayed with a hose...whenever a character gets wet, the author is signifying baptism. As Amory leaves his New York and steps into a taxi Fitzgerald writes the most uninspiring and simple sentence of the book, "It was raining torrents." I don't think there is any way he leaves this four-word-simple-sentence as a standalone when he could easily have weaved the rain into another sentence. I think Amory is changed when he arrives in Princeton. I guess we'll find out in chapter four, right?
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