The Great Gatsby: Pages 109-120

After reading this portion of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, a question Daisy Buchanan asks stuck with me as I continued to read. “‘What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?’ cried Daisy, ‘and the day after that, and the next thirty years?’” (Fitzgerald, 118). Although Daisy is actually complaining that the hot summer sun leaves them with nothing to do, this question made me think about both the characters’ lives and my own life. With the affairs that both Daisy and her husband are having with other people, who knows whether their marriage will last through the afternoon, let alone for thirty more years! The couple has created so much confusion and drama in their relationship that nothing holds certain for them anymore, and yes, Daisy does have reason to be worried. For character Jay Gatsby, he is relying completely on the hope that Daisy will leave Tom Buchanan, her husband, in order to be with him, but Daisy very well might change her mind, and then where will Gatsby be? He has no close friends or family except for Nick Carraway, and Nick does not even support Gatsby all of the time. All of the uncertainty surrounding one afternoon for the characters of The Great Gatsby made me think about all of the things in my life that are uncertain. Quite honestly, not one person knows whether they are going to wake up tomorrow, whether they will ever go back to school, or ever go out to dinner again. I do not know whether my parents will come home from work one day, or whether the storm brewing miles away will change my life forever. Obviously, nothing is certain. However, as none of these happenings are under our control, we must sit back and live life, as we cannot predict the future, nor can we change the past and our decisions that constantly shape our lives.