While packing for my first year at Georgetown University a few short weeks ago — a carefully curated process of tearing my bedroom apart to see just how much I could fit into two suitcases and a backpack — I stumbled upon a relic buried deep in my nightstand: my best friend’s copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” I don’t know how it got there, but I know why it was there.
“The Great Gatsby” has been my favorite book since I first read it at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and is, as weird as it may sound, somewhat of a personal scripture to me. Every scene is a parable, and every line of dialogue is like a proverb that frames the way I see the world, my hopes and my dreams.
Knowing what the book meant to me, my best friend gifted me his personally annotated copy for my 17th birthday. Two years later, 24 hours before going away to college, I rediscovered this lost treasure. Leafing through the pages, I found a new meaning that excited, unsettled and scared me all at once: Georgetown’s promise is my green light at the end of the dock — “the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.”
Gatsby’s green light is one of the most recognizable symbols of the “American Dream” in all of literature. On a good day, it can represent our hope in that dream — the genuine belief that whatever we want can one day be within our grasp, as long as we’re willing to get our hands dirty. On a bad day, the green light seems to only taunt us, holding that same dream just out of our reach. On the worst of days, it can be the topic of your five-page, double-spaced high school English essay. At Georgetown, our green light is found at the intersection of these perspectives — always visible, but not in the way we might’ve been taught to see it.
For as long as I can remember, thanks to the unyielding input from my friends and family, my bucket list contained a single item: get into a college that was “good enough.” Georgetown certainly checked that box. I thought college would be the realization of this “American Dream” — a promise of material success and a message to the world that I made it.
Even now that I’m here at Georgetown, this myth still exists in my head partly because, as my tour guide told me when I asked why she chose to go here during my senior year rush of college tours, “it’s Georgetown.” The problem lies in that exact outlook, one which almost every Georgetown student shares: We see the low acceptance rate, accomplished graduates and grandeur of Healy Hall and think we’ve made it. But even though Georgetown has been my dream — my “American Dream” — in reality, it’s never been some enchanted object that possesses the ability to suddenly elevate my status in the world. This isn’t my fairy-tale ending. So, what now?
My copy of “The Great Gatsby,” now sitting on the bookshelf of my dorm, reminds me to challenge how I view my college experience. While the “American Dream” is, in the end, nothing more than a myth, I can hold onto the hope that drives me toward a different dream. Even if I can no longer believe in the material success promised by college, I can cling to and realize this hope in other ways.
On the last page of my gifted paperback, my best friend answers this search by writing in the margins: “capacity for wonder = hope.” Our capacity for wonder keeps us going and keeps us dreaming; we are driven not by our desires themselves but by the feeling of desire. No matter how many times we fail, we wonder if maybe, just maybe, we’ll get it next time. Eventually, we’ll find something we’re looking for — even if we don’t yet know we’re looking for it.
So, I don’t know if things will work out, but I hope anyway. I don’t know if studying will improve my chances of a better grade, but I study anyway. I don’t know if loving this girl will only end in tears, but, like Gatsby, I’ll love her anyway — maybe I can have my own fairy-tale ending after all.
Dylan Goral is a first-year student in the College of Arts & Sciences. This is the first installment of his column, “The Fairy Tales We Tell.”