Memorable Passage

"He smiled understandingly — much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced — or seemed to face — the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished — and I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd." -The Great Gatsby, Chapter 3

This is a great passage to me, as it reminds me of anytime you meet somebody who you instantly know. That wonderful moment when you find somebody who will be a life-long friend and a soul-brother or soul-sister. This passage shows that a person like that can be as important to you as yourself. However, I like that it also shows that when you meet such people that they are only people. We are all humans who can relate to each other and even someone who seems so powerful and great can be seen through that illusion to their feet that are planted solidly on the ground. I especially love how achingly human and at the same time divine this smile makes its owner appear to Nick.




 This is the moment in which Fitzgerald allowed us a glimpse into the soul of Gatsby, or perhaps the moment in which we saw what Gatsby aspired to be. The person who understood and had compassion for everyone is something that Nick believed him to be and would later reflect that such a person was actually what Gatsby needed more than any money or intrigue. Perhaps when he smiled we were also seeing Gatsby as everybody wants to be seen, only the best of him without any of the faults. I love every moment of this passage for these very reasons.

 Besides all the deeper meanings to this passage, I also love it for the simplistic and beautiful language that it contains. It conveys what it wants to say not only in what it says, but how it says those things. F. Scott Fitzgerald made this an incredibly memorable passage for me and others in through conveying all of these meanings. Perhaps it was not his intent to say all of this, but we can see these things in this passage from him and ourselves.