Both “ The Great Gatsby ” and “ The Motorcycle Diaries ” are the narratives of work forces following their dreams. Both Jay Gatsby and Ernesto Guevara are prompted by an interior push to make things whose ultimate end is the fulfillment of a dream ; while one is trailing the dream of the rekindling a long-lost love, the other is following the dream of escapade and find. As Guevara himself puts it at the really start of his book, “ this is aˆ¦ a glance of two lives that ran parallel for a clip, with similar hopes and convergent dreams ” ( Guevara 2004:31 ) . The hopes of both our supporters serve the critical map of supplying intending to their being, inasmuch as these hopes are the flicker that incites the fire inside both work forces ‘s Black Marias, finally traveling them to take the reins of their lives, directing it towards a end. Austrian head-shrinker Viktor Frankl states that “ adult male ‘s hunt for significance is the primary motive in his life ” ( Frankl 1959:45 ) . We can so deduce that intending provides the base for the aforesaid construct of “ human flourishing ” , or merely set, felicity.
At this point it is necessary to tag a distinguishing facet between both work forces ‘s dreams, in footings of the different dimensions where the objects of their hopes dwell in. In Ernesto Guevara we see the consequence of an urge that surges from the interior out by itself, that is, without mention to outer classs. This impulse enables him to detect the universe that he is about to research in an open-minded manner, leting himself to be acquainted with worlds without any preconceived impression, therefore non restraining the freedom of the individual sing it, and actively doing him to be as honest and every bit true as possible to “ [ who ] is the step of all thingsaˆ¦ ” ( Guevara 2004:31 ) , the ultimate justice of a individual: adult male himself. Conversely, in Jay Gatsby it is clear to see that all his dreams and semblances revolve around the idealistic image he has of a adult female, Daisy Buchannan, an image in which “ he had thrown himself into aˆ¦ with a originative passion, adding to it all the timeaˆ¦ ” ( Fitzgerald 1950:103 ) . This differentiation between an interior push for an unfastened find of something -in this instance the Latin American reality- without any preconceived thoughts, as opposed to the magnetic attraction exerted from the exterior by an illusive thought -the about deified image of a woman- created by the individual ‘s imaginativeness, is of paramount importance to decently specify the nature of both work forces ‘s motives, and to understand why both ways finally led them to so different results.
German psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm said that “ in the exercising of an active affect, adult male is free, he is maestro of his affect ; in the exercising of a inactive affect, adult male aˆ¦ is the object of motives of which he himself is non cognizant ” ( 1957:32 ) . Following this idea, in Guevara ‘s journey we see the exercising of an active affect, sing that the active fondness that motivated his journey did non hold a blindfolding consequence upon him ; on the contrary, the dream that he was trailing, a dream that he was populating instead than being lived by, helped to give birth to a wholly new individual, to a wholly new world-view, as it is demonstrated in the undermentioned lines:
The individual who wrote this notes passed away the minute his pess touched Argentine dirt. The individual who reorganizes and polishes them, me, is no longer, at least I ‘m non the individual I one time was. All this rolling around “ Our America with capital Angstrom ” has changed me more than I thought. ( 2004:32 )
On the other side, Jay Gatsby had set his head from the really beginning of the narrative to suppress back the love of Daisy. The thought of doing this dream a world had such a strong influence on him that he was willing to give up all of himself, including his background and his individuality, so as to make a character that could stand every bit high as the image of Daisy stood in his head. This of class was non an easy undertaking, for how can a adult male prove himself to be worthy of a fictional goddess? The route chosen by Gatsby was that of affecting her and the whole universe with extraordinary stuff luxury, garnering as many of import people as he could in his really well-known parties, ( in which he barely of all time took portion ) , in which, as the book states, “ work forces and misss came and went like moths among the rustles and the bubbly and the stars ” ( 1950:43 ) . When finally his attempts led him to a reunion with Daisy, we can see the shallow nature of this love epitomized by the episode in which Gatsby starts throwing into the air his expensive shirts:
He took out a heap of shirts and began throwing them, one by one before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and all right flannel which lost their creases as they fell and covered the tabular array in many-colored confusion…
Suddenly with a labored sound, Daisy bent her caput into the shirts and began to shout turbulently.
‘They ‘re such beautiful shirts, ‘ she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick creases. ‘It makes me sad because I ‘ve ne’er seen such-such beautiful shirts before. ‘ ( 1950:100 )
It strongly called my attending how the seemingly nonmeaningful event of holding a cupboard full of all right shirts could be so exciting and important for Daisy, who had n’t shown such strong emotions before, non even during the first blink of an eyes of her reacquaintance with Gatsby. Events like this aid to give form to the kernel of Gatsby ‘s dream, which is corresponded in a manner coherent with its untrue or at least deformed nature. He receives a sort of fictional love which I believe to be every bit fabricated as his ain. Traveling back to the words of Fromm, and correlating Gatsby ‘s fondness to a inactive 1 in which he does non populate his dream, but is instead lived by it, one can believe that he was propelled by motives of which he was non even cognizant, since consciously he might hold thought that his ultimate end was to acquire Daisy ‘s love back, but unconsciously it is clear to state that is non the existent Daisy who he wants back, but instead the Utopian and perfectly non-existent version of her that the he dedicated old ages to craft in his head. And as Frankl said, “ Woe to him, when the twenty-four hours of his dreams eventually came, found it to be so different from all that he had longed for! ” ( 1959:54 ) Ultimately in the narrative, the award that Gatsby receives by trailing a dream which was wholly twisted from the start, is being killed for a offense which he did non even commit ( but conjecture who did perpetrate itaˆ¦ yes, his darling Daisy ) , and buried with no more than three people go toing to his funeral ( group of people amongst which, of class, Daisy was non in ) , in a state of affairs that sombrely contrasted with the 100s of people that used to come and travel from his parties, basking his music and imbibing his intoxicant.
On the other manus, how do Ernesto “ Che ” Guevara ‘s dreams respond to him? As we stated before, his dreams were made of a wholly different nature, had wholly different motives, and epitomized what we have called an active affect, that in which the adult male is the maestro of his fondness. He is non seeking to populate up to any exteriorly imposed criterion, and he keeps faithful to his honestness towards himself and the whole universe every bit good. “ The Motorcycle Diaries ” tells us the narrative of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, before he became the universe celebrated “ Che ” Guevara. But certainly the escapades, narratives, and worlds that Ernesto and his comrade witnessed and lived throughout their journey through Latin America greatly helped to organize both the dreams and the bravery of the oncoming “ Che ” figure, that of the revolutionist, that of the interpreter before the UN, and that of the myth that is still present in modern times. And even during the concluding stretches of his journey, Ernesto is blessed with something of a prognostication, in which his fate as a leader is subtly, or possibly non so subtly, presented unto him, assisting to penetrate the enigmas of what his hereafter held for him, in a really telling and touching epiphany:
I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two counter halves, I would be with the people. I know this, I see it printed in the dark sky that I, eclectic hypocrite of philosophy and psychoanalyst of tenet, ululating like one possessed, will assail the roadblocks or the trenches, will take my bloodstained arm and, consumed by rage, slaughter any enemy that falls into my custodies. ( 2004:32 )
As it was said at the beginning of this work, both books tell the narrative of work forces who are trailing their dreams, and both attempt to accomplish a sense of meaningfulness for their lives, finally supplying a province of felicity. We have analyzed both work forces ‘s motives, and discovered a cardinal component which is the immanency or transcendency of each one ‘s objects of hope and inspiration to transport out their ends, and we have seen how the subjective feature of Guevara ‘s dream allowed him to follow an honest aim which finally led him to the find, or at least to hold a glance at, the intent of his being, which in the terminal translates to a pure development of all his potencies, and the skill of the so sought-after felicity. On the other side, we saw how Gatsby ‘s dreams wholly shattered in what seemed to be the inevitable result of something which started with non the most honorable purposes, neither for himself nor towards the remainder of the people who surrounded him ; he ended up dead and virtually entirely, bereft of the glorification and luster that he tried the universe to believe was his. So the most resonant decision in my head is that if following a dream, one should make what it is at one ‘s range to do it existent. However, it would function a truly good intent to analyse the purposes of that dream ; to see if it is whether an active statement of the interior desires of our bosom, or instead an illusive image that is outside of our bosom ‘s innermost secrets that is fueling our pursuits for accomplishing our dreams and felicity, because if we are following an ideal or an image formed in the outside universe, with mention to outer criterions instead than interior intuitions of what we truly are our heartfelt desires, we would finally be trailing a shade which would ne’er be caught, elusive in nature, and whose pursuit would merely take us to frustration and letdown.
Carlos G. Toledo Parada
