The Third Act

The average person in our class can understand the running motif of immense wealth being the downfall of us all, starting with The Song of Solomon and ending with The Great Gatsby we've been introduced to people who came into this world without nothing and near the end of their respective journey's they acquire "everything" but sadly are left with nothing. Sure Milkman becomes wealthy and well off during the story, but then he ends up getting murdered by a man that he referred to as a brother, Gatsby comes from dirt poor farmers and evolved into a legend only heard of through rumors and gossip but ends up shot to death after changing himself into what he though mattered for other people. Daisy didn't want to wait for Gatsby to come back from the war and start a relationship with him, so she left and ever since then he built himself into what he thought true happiness looked like. Level with me here devout reader, when you're in a car and you stare out the wi...

"Can't repeat the past?... Why of course you can!"-Jay Gatsby The immortal words of F. Scott Fitzgerald never resonated with me before until reading that line, and  with nothing else but eyes for his loved one Daisy to keep him going for those five years they spent apart, Gatsby managed to immortalize every moment they spent together on repeat while he waited for their reunion. Every wrinkle, every argument, every fight, every heartache, was painted over in a permanent gloss along with the memories they created together before the war and social class split them up, Leaving Daisy and her memory to be referred to in nothing less but pure divinity. The only problem with that was the obvious fact that Gatsby let his emotions for who Daisy was cloud over the new persona she had taken on in his absence. Fueled by the drive to recreate the relationship that was lost, the only thing that Gatsby ever truly cared about, the one thing that his award winning smile and mountains of...

The 1920’s were considered America’s teenage years with the introduction of modernism being the final catalyst that split the new generation from the old ways. At the time, with the invention of the flapper dress, the childish use of alcohol, with the idea of spending large amounts of money they didn’t own was obviously frowned upon by the earlier years but it had me thinking, are we seeing another resurgence of that now with the culture exhibited by millennials and Gen Z? If you haven’t heard by now, the vote to legalize marijuana in the US is fast approaching and the commercials for pro supporters and the opposers have clouded my social media feed enough for me to blog about it. You have the obvious parents voicing their disapproval with words like “think of the children” and “is this the kind of America you want to grow up in?”. And then you have the supporters with the popular phrase “make America green again!” call me crazy, but reading The Great Gatsby has shown me a rather u...