Hello, again! I’m still having no luck finding a decent passage from a play that would actually fit with a song, so I bring to you another book passage! It’s from another one of my favorite books and I hope you guys have read it too. I’ll be looking at a passage from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and “Like a Song” by Lenka.
The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scot Fitzgerald, published in 1925.
“Like a Song” by Lenka, released in 2008 on her self-titled debut album “Lenka.”
“Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was reclining against the mantelpiece in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease, even of boredom. His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face of a defunct mantelpiece clock, and from this position his distraught eyes stared down at Daisy, who was sitting, frightened but graceful, on the edge of a stiff chair.
‘We’ve met before,’ muttered Gatsby. His eyes glanced momentarily at me, and his lips parted with an abortive attempt at a laugh. Luckily the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers, and set it back in place. Then he sat down, rigidly, his elbow on the arm of the sofa and his chin in his hand…
‘It’s an old clock,’ I told them idiotically.
I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on the floor… After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end… Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock.
Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high…
He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us…While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher — shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, and monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.
‘They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such — such beautiful shirts before’” (Chapter 5).
As always, here’s the song to go with the passage! I changed it a bit this week and listened to the lyrics a bit more and so it helps to look at the lyrics, as well. I’ll just post a lyrics video for you!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkJ2rAnOLdU
In both this passage and the song, time is a huge concept. This is reflected with the use of the xylophone in the song; it creates a melancholic and nostalgic tone. In the beginning of the passage, Gatsby and Daisy meet for the first time in a long time in Nick’s cottage and Gatsby is visibly nervous at the very presence of Daisy, so much so that he clumsily knocks over the clock on Nick’s mantelpiece. The knocking over and catching of the clock symbolizes Gatsby’s clumsiness in his attempt to hold time. With Daisy sitting right there, he just wants to recapture the past, and when Nick mentions, “I think we all believed for a moment that it smashed in pieces on the floor,” he is referring to the fact that though time has long gone, everybody refuses to acknowledge it. This extreme sense of nostalgia for Gatsby is represented in the song with the use of the haunting playing of the xylophone and the dancing keys of the piano. The piano represents his memory of his old love with Daisy while the seemingly haunting xylophone symbolizes the fact that he cannot have what he once had.
When the three go to Gatsby’s, though, and Gatsby is run down like an “overwound clock,” this symbolizes how he has returned himself to the present, and he goes on to show off to Nick and Daisy by showering them with his shirts. Daisy cries because she is overwhelmed not only with the beauty of the shirts, but also because she is distraught. She is realizing what she could have had if she had waited for Gatsby. She and Tom are wealthy as well, but there is no love; she cannot ever have the love that she and Gatsby had ever again because she did not wait. This goes along with the nostalgia in the music and lyrics of “Like a Song” because she wants the past to come back to her as well.
The relationship of Gatsby and Daisy is told perfectly with the lyrics of this song, especially when it says, “You left a light on inside me, my love/ I can remember the way that it felt to be.” They both refuse to admit that they truly miss each other, especially because she is married with a child now, but they do feel this pain of the nostalgia. Daisy feels not only this nostalgia, but she is torn as well. She is indecisive, as the lyric “Time, make it go faster or just decide/ To come back to my happy heart” suggests, because she wants Gatsby, and she knows that she can have him if she pleases, but she has loyalty to Tom. In the time she is living in, the Roaring 20s, she cannot just leave Tom for Gatsby. She loves them both in different ways and she does not know whether or not she’s prefer the past love she had with Gatsby or the love she is supposed to have with Tom in the present. In conclusion, it is decided that Daisy is ultimately “old money” and cannot catch up with Gatsby’s “new money” pace. She decides that she is more comfortable where she knows, back with Tom; thus leaving Gatsby with his lonesome self which, in the end, greatly intertwines with the melancholic tone that “Like A Song” sets.
I actually came across this song first, and then decided to put a passage to the song because I loved the way it sounded. I thought of The Great Gatsby and the mantle scene because of the symbolism that would tie in with the song. This song, to me, seems haunting at first but its’fitting with the “nostalgia of a lost love” tone that just trails throughout the passage. It really is a beautiful song and represents their relationship perfectly. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading!
Wow, this was a very haunting song. In high school I too read The Great Gatsby, and thought that your analysis of the Mantle scene was very accurate. I thought that the connection you made between the song and the passage was very astute and clear. It was not evident to me at first that time was involved in both pieces, but now it is abundantly clear. Both pieces seemed to show a bit of regret for letting past loves die and expire. This is of course the crux of the Gatsby plot.