The Individual Within Me

After a week, we have finally finished reading The Great Gatsby. I felt bad for what Gatsby had to go through because he really didn't do anything wrong. In my mind, I see him as representing a large part of the population today. In the book, we see Gatsby with a luxurious house with all kinds of features such as a "machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb." Even though all of this might seem nice, it does not bring the true meaning of life that one should really focus on. Throughout the book, we see Gatsby quite lonely during his short life. He throws many parties that make him seem popular but if we look deeper, we can see that he does not really have any true friends that he interacts with besides Nick. His one real priority in life is the love of Daisy and he looks at this with quite a passion but it really tears him apart and eventually leads to his downfall. Now if we look into today's world, many people are craving about the idea of money, which has not changed from the past. Many of these famous pop stars have this money, but they too have a lonely feeling in them at some point. Traveling tirelessly with no true friend interactions really strains them down and puts them into a similar situation like Gatsby. While many people don't realize any of these consequences while they are still at an average standard of living, they take advantage of what they already have. Still,unlike the 1920's, many people realized that money does not bring people happiness but true friendship and family does. Life is not supposed to come at ease and the connections you make while you are at this point will give you what you need to live a happy life. As Thomas Aquinas said, "There is nothing on this Earth more to be prized than true friendship."