First Impressions are so Important

in life as well as in literature. An author has only so much space to really grab a reader's attention and those first lines are prime real estate. In today's blog I wanted to spend some time discussing the first lines from notable classical novels. Many of these I teach in my AP Lit class and have taught for years--true classics.

The Sound and the Fury 
by William Faulkner

"Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting."

So, we'll start off with a novel that I don't actually teach, but this is what inspired me to do this particular blog post.  As far as first lines go this one is pretty good. Faulkner is a master with these sorts of things. We can see in this line one of his traits as an author, the lack of names. He starts us off with the pronoun "I" and then leaves us to figure out who that "I" is later on in the first chapter. In this case, it is answered pretty quickly, but sometimes author's can leave us hanging for quite a while. I'm looking at your Octavia Butler!

The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind every since."

I have to be honest with this one, I am not the biggest fan of the opening line of Gatsby. I think the first little bit of this book is pretty rough too. It isn't until we get to the part about Gatsby being alright in the end that I feel that this novel really starts to be interesting. The opening of this novel is all Nick's reflection and doesn't really make sense to the reader until after they have finished with the book. I doubt many readers go back and re-read that section when they finish The Great Gatsby either.

Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad

"The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was a rest."

My students complain about Heart of Darkness every single year and I can see where they are coming from. It is an extremely difficult text and Conrad's prose is dense. You really have to concentrate on what he is saying in those long, drawn out sentences. But if you look at Conrad from a structure point of view, his prose is near perfection. The dude knows his stuff. Even though this is not the longest first sentence we will be discussing, there is a lot going on. We have the appositive phrase, "a cruising yawl," helping the reader to understand what the Nellie is. The yawl then swings her anchor; the action of swinging is interesting because it isn't a human that is performing the action, it is as if the boat itself is doing it. And Conrad doesn't call the boat in it either, he uses the proper pronoun "her" to identify the ship. All boats are girls, don't you know. 

Fight Club is The Great Gatsby

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE GREAT GATSBY

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

In the afterword of Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk states:

"Really, what I was writing was just The Great Gatsby, updated a little. It was 'apostolic' fiction--where a surviving apostle tells the story of his hero. There are two men and a woman. And one man, the hero, is shot to death."

Now, Palahniuk simplifies things a bit. The Great Gatsby is at it's heart a story of a love triangle and in the end the "hero" does indeed get shot to death. The Great Gatsby is about so much more than that, but I get what he is suggesting. I am not the first one to look at these comparisons either. There is a terrific article by Reece Choules entitled, Fight Club vs. The Great Gatsby: Was Palahniuk's Novel a Modern Update which you should check out.
But I do think that it would be interesting to dig into this idea a little further.

First, we could spend some time sussing out who the characters connect to in The Great Gatsby.

Choules states that Tyler is Gatsby, Marla is Daisy, and the narrator could be a sort of Nick Carraway. Then the Fight Clubs and Project Mayhem would be Tom Buchanan since they stop the main characters from getting what they want. This is a fine interpretation. I can see how Tyler could be Gatsby. He wants things--Marla, destruction, but most importantly he wants a world that is different than the current one he live in. Gatsby could be said to share that desire. He wants to live in a world in which Daisy never loved Tom and Gatsby is willing to do everything in his power to create this world. Tyler also does not hold back in his attempts to achieve his dream.

I think you could also see the characters in a different light, with the narrator as Gatsby, Marla is still Daisy, and Tyler Durden is Tom Buchanan. Gatsby gets shot in the end and Tom (essentially) is the one that makes that happen. The narrator is shot at the end of Fight Club and Tyler pushes that event. Marla is the sexual desire of the narrator, even if it is just subconscious. Like Gatsby, the narrator deeply wants Marla. And Tom Buchanan is a definition perfect man-child, just like Tyler.

Of course, these character analyses become muddled when we get to the end of the book and it is revealed that the narrator is Tyler Durden. So they the narrator is both Gatsby and Tom Buchana? Or the narrator is both Gatsby and Nick? See what I mean? Not quite as interesting anymore.

Choules then discusses the themes of both books and I totally agree with his assessment.

"The Great Gatsby was about a vacuum in the soul of society after WWI, or the downside of the American dream and the struggle of the classes; then Fight Club is about the rejection of that dream. In the world Palahniuk creates everyone has become cocooned in the pursuit of perfection. Perfect catalogue houses, impossibly sculptured bodies, designer clothes, rock god status, and fast cars are the dreams on sale, and everyone is told to believe in these."

Choules is absolutely right. The characters in The Great Gatsby are just beginning to understand the problems inherent in the American dream. Which they all become very disillusioned with at the end. The characters in Fight Club outright reject the American dream as many people in society are doing today. 

But on a very simplistic level, I can agree that Fight Club could be seen as an updated Great Gatsby.