VERSION|0.5.1|NAME|Dinah|DATE|1368481785|CONTENT|Giles didn’t mention Doctor T J Eckleburg, a fading advertisement sign for an oculist consisting of an gigantic pair of eyes (the retinas are a yard high) with no face, but sporting an enormous pair of yellow glasses.  One of the characters in the book, Wilson, thinks the eyes are those of God, who ‘sees everything.’  Whether it is the eyes of Dr Eckleburg or a naked man on a cross, these are just as much false gods as any others in the book.  Great literature holds a mirror up to ourselves and presents us with a range of flawed characters facing moral dilemmas.  What it does generally not do is suggest there is some kind of universal redemption available to everyone providing they sign up to someone else’s rulebook: works that are too didactic in this way usually fail to make the grade as great art.  The ending of the book makes it clear that Scott Fitzgerald realised humans continue to strive for something ultimately unachievable.

‘Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.  It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further…And one fine morning –

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’
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