i wrote most of this during a 15 minute session in my reading/writing class. i’d just finished the great gatsby and pondered over it for a long time, since i failed to appreciate it when i read it 2 or so years ago but felt it much more profoundly this time around. we had an assignment, a really great one imo, to write an eulogy for gatsby in groups of 2 or 3, but i didn’t want to take others’ writing for my own (and the style of theirs was very different from mine) so i rewrote their parts in my own words. it’s not perfect or gramatically correct even but it’s raw and the best i could do within the time i was given. and i’m happy with it, so here it is.
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Jay Gatsby once said to me, sure and proud, that he could repeat the past. I wish it was true, but if it was, I wouldn’t be standing here today. My name is Nick Carraway, and thank you for coming to this small funeral that I have arranged in his honor. I suppose I am, as much as I can be, a good friend of our James Gatz. Or, the name he would have wanted and the name most of you knew him by, Jay Gatsby.
It is likely that very few of you know of Gatsby’s true origins. He claimed to many, including me, that he graduated from Oxford and was from a wealthy family. His lies were not ill-intentioned, but merely attempts to blend in with the careless rich that he so desired to be a part of. But he told me the following not long before he died — his family was not rich. They were ordinary farmers who led ordinary lives. But his poorer childhood did turn into a wealthy life as he met Dan Cody at age 17, a wealthy man, and this was one stroke of fate that set him on the lonely, tragic path that he was to tread. In fact know more of him than just a friend — we had fought in the same division as him during the Great War. He served distinguishingly then, and that is a fact, no matter how he changed afterward. The rest I will not detail here, but many years later he found himself with a huge, empty mansion and deeply in love.
He always chased his dream of being with his idol and the love of his life, Daisy. I admire him for that and his ability to pursue a dream, albeit a misguided and unworthy one, for many years until he finally reached it, if even for a brief second that immediately halted. But I remember the day he met Daisy again in my house, and the pure intensity and bliss that radiated from him even as her imperfection fell short of his dreams. But I shouldn’t have been surprised that he was always thinking of her, even to the end, naive Gatsby who never failed to believe that Daisy always and only loved him.
Even though the Gatsby I knew lied and struggled and didn’t always choose the right thing, just like many of us, to me, he was still a great man who was willing to pursue his one dream despite it being so impossible, so far-fetched. Now that we are drawing to an end of this eulogy I would like to say some final words in his favor. Many of you may not believe me, but that is alright, for I know I am speaking the truth: Jay Gatsby never killed Myrtle Wilson, nor did he sleep with her. He was an honorable man who knew only one thing, which was his hope, his idol, his dream that was Daisy Buchanan. Often, not just one night, I found him stretching his arms towards the green light across the bay, towards the mansion with the girl that he so desired. Everything he did was for her and his dream — the enormous wealth he amassed, the empty house he bought, the extravagant parties he hosted — all a way to lure her back. And in a way, he was so close to reaching her again, if only he had not put his dedicated, unwavering love in Daisy Buchanan, who did not give a care in the world about him in the end. Unfortunately, few of his so-called friends did either.
So here we are, mourning the loss of a man who dared to have hope. He turned out all right in the end — but was preyed on by the carless rich, wronged by the indifference and destructive cruelty of his one love. You may not believe me, but I again speak the truth that I will say one last time in my life — he died innocent, killed by a man he had no direct connection to due to miscommunications, but he died fulfilled, having reunited, at least partially, with his love. Jay Gatsby was a great man.
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