Last page of "The Great Gatsby"

Last page of

_The Great Gatsby
_by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors eyesa fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsbys house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an sthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsbys wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisys dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the [orgastic][1] future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but thats no mattertomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning

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

Ah, so you think **orgastic **is wrong, eh? You remember it as orgiastic?

Well, like most people, I had grown up with the original Scribners Library edition of _The Great Gatsby _from prep school, and had quoted from that last page for years at cocktail parties. But one day I noticed a new corrected edition at my local bookstore, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, Jeffries Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. I naturally opened it to the last page.

I, too, was shocked to see this orgastic, and, turning to the editors notes, I found:

When Edmund Wilson re-edited the novel after Fitzgeralds death, he tampered with the eloquent coda: Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future . . . substituting _orgiastic _for orgastic.

In his essay Getting It Right: The Publishing Process and the Correction of Factual Errorswith Reference to The Great Gatsby, Bruccoli explains further:

. . . when Edmund Wilson edited The Great Gatsby in 1941 he emended the celebrated line Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future, that year by year recedes before us. He subsequently explained: The word _orgastic, _on the last page, I took to be Scotts mistake for _orgiastic_he was very unreliable about words. But Fitzgeralds intention is certain. Perkins had queried _orgastic, _and Fitzgerald replied that it expresses exactly the intended ecstasy. Wilsons emendation to orgiastic future became the standard reading in later editions of the novel.

Its fascinating, and its clear that Fitzgerald meant orgastic (of orgasms) rather than orgiastic (of orgies). Its a sexier word, but the loss of this one i meant I had to change my whole cocktail-party rhythm.

You can find the entire essay at http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/essays/right.html.

Note on the text of _The Great Gatsby _Copyright 1991, 1992 by Eleanor Lanahan, Matthew J. Bruccoli and Samuel J. Lanahan as Trustees under Agreement dated July 3, 1975, created by Frances Scott Fitzgerald Smith.

Page last revised October 30, 1997.

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