Love: A Universal Truth

Romeo and Juliet. England, 1597. Hong Lou Meng (I know, you have no clue what this is). China, 1791. Gatsby. America, 1925. What are they doing together? Has Ziyang gone crazy? Yeah, they’re all works of literature, but, as can be seen, they span centuries and continents. On the surface, they share no similarities whatsoever. However, within the pages lies a different tory. all of these novels feature the notorious theme of forbidden love, and affection-driven characters that would do anything to be together. This makes The Great Gatsby a very universal novel, despite its comparatively contemporary setting. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby completely reflects the universal, timeless archetype of the tragic hero who works infinitely hard to achieve their dream in love, only to die in pursuit of that dream.

To create a hero, tragic or not, it is essential that the author builds reader sympathy for said hero. There is no way for a character to be heroic if readers despise them, like I despised McCandless from Into the Wild. Shakespeare creates reader compassion for Romeo and Juliet by using elegant, poetic language to describe the titular couple’s mutual affections, and by making them a relatable couple. Likewise, Cao Xueqin, author of Hong Lou Meng, builds sympathy for his protagonist Jia Baoyu by giving him a divine, prophetic birth (he is born with the jade of spiritual understanding in his mouth; jade is considered very fortuitous in China). Cao also romanticizes Jia’s love, Lin Daiyu, stating that she is the reincarnation of a flower, reborn mortal to repay Jia with tears for watering her in her previous life. (It’s probably the most romantic reincarnation ever!) Don’t you love them already?

Unlike Ro...

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...y Gatsby- that some dreams are unattainable, too distant to be accomplished. Reaching higher will only lead to falling harder, and, in Gatsby’s case, to death.

Impossible relationships have always been a struggle of humanity, and through Gatsby, Hong Lou Meng, and Romeo and Juliet, we see that failure, even death in pursuit of love is a very common theme, emerging across the corners of the globe. In fact, these exact works and their archetypes are still alive today, in the form of movies, never-ending TV series, and musicals. The backgrounds of Gatsby, Bao, Lin, Romeo, and Juliet may be diverse, and they may never meet in the same setting (that’s what fanfiction is for), but it’s pellucid that their stories speak the same universal truth: Humans will do anything for love.

Works Cited

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print.