Three Visions, One America by Saija Shah '23

SAIJA SHAH '23

While visiting the harbor one day, Gatsby looks out across the waters. His eyes settle on Dan Cody’s approaching yacht. Nick analyzes, “to young Gatz, … that yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world” (100). It was this occurrence that prompted Gatsby to start making a series of changes in his life that he thought might allow him to achieve even some of that beauty and glamour. Despite its suddenness, his spark being the yacht is characteristic of the path he directed this change to take, in that by and large, Gatsby equated wealth with the possession of expensive goods. Leaving the harbor that day, he carried with him an American Dream of his own. In 1959, Ramesh Shah made the choice to leave the small village of Bardoli, India in pursuit of the education and opportunity the United States was said to offer. By ship, he went first to London and then to the United States. My grandfather often tells the story of, “The Most Expensive Dal I Ever Bought”. One of the few possessions he brought on the trip was a suitcase packed with rice and dals, quite the staple in Gujarati cuisine. Nowadays I don’t think twice about a trip to Sunny’s Asian Food and Spices, but when my grandfather first came, Americans had never even heard of his kind of food. Upon his arrival in London, a man approached him with an offer to take care of shipping the suitcase to his final destination, which would relieve him of the need to carry it. Now, if you’ve ever had to figure out how you were possibly going to carry a bag of basmati rice from Sunny’s counter to the car, you might understand why this was an enticing offer. Liberty mad. This phrase was used to describe colonists in the late 18th century, driven into excitement by a new ideology that rights were not something you should attain by being an Englishman, but rather something that you were naturally allowed as a free man. After years of different fights for freedom, people were ready to end the fighting and push the boundaries on what that term defined. This progressed alongside the American Revolutionary War, in which the colonies of the Americas joined efforts to break away from England’s grasp and form a more righteous state. As a new nation, the resulting “United States of America” had no tradition to uphold, leading many to take the claim that it had both the ability and the power to become an ‘asylum’. Gatsby certainly succeeds at generating the material wealth he sought. By his late twenties, he’s recklessly driving around fancy cars and hosting lavish parties every weekend at his mansion in West Egg. The young Gatsby might have taken pleasure in seeing that the goal he outlined watching Cody’s yacht did come to fruition. However, as time passes, he loses all sight of this accomplishment. Nick begins to notice Gatsby isolating himself at each of these parties. He goes to them and sometimes doesn’t even see Gatsby there. His ever attuned eye notes, “Gatsby didn’t know me now at all. I looked once more at [his eyes] and they looked back at me, remotely possessed by intense life” (96). This method, one of employing the noise as a shield from recognition, is an inclination of Gatsby’s throughout his life. To him, that is an easier feat than the confrontation of his dissatisfaction.

Something I hear my dad, the son of this grandfather, often say is that if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. This was the case with that man’s offer. Upon arrival in America, my grandfather was told that in order to get possession of the suitcase back, he would need to pay a very steep price. There was no room to bargain, as the other end of the deal had already been completed. I find it interesting to think that ultimately my grandfather still chose to pay for it. That expenditure left him quite literally broke, at which point he went to go live with his friend in New York. Now, despite being filled to the brim, that suitcase was only ever going to provide a finite amount of dal. There would be a period of his life where my grandfather didn’t have that stash to pull from, but he wasn’t ready to start that just yet. The American diet at that time consisted of a whole different kind of food. At one point, he was eating straight sticks of butter in order to gain back the weight he’d lost. All of this makes me question why? Why was 1959 the time to leave for the US- a world in which that one suitcase of dal was the only link to India he could have? Said differently, what was his American dream? Asylum- noun: shelter or protection from danger. Thomas Paine writes in Common Sense, “the United States should be an asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty”. By this definition, Paine’s view of liberty acting as an asylum makes a simultaneous suggestion that there is danger in having a lack of freedom. The dream that accompanied the new nation of America was directly tied to breaking free from that danger and embracing naturally given rights. Perhaps stating it in this way adds urgency to the matter as well, shifting it from just a dream to a necessary course of action. It worked, too. With this new idea of the American Dream in mind, many were persuaded to resettle in the Americas in hopes of living it out themselves. The most outstanding trait of Jay Gatsby is undoubtedly his persistence. He wasn’t a man to evolve his views or ideas; once a cause sprung his interest, he was set to chase its fulfillment to the end. This transpires in two ways: one in his determination to end up with Daisy Buchanan and the other in his desire to demonstrate great wealth in his social sphere. Ultimately, Gatsby’s problem was not his passions, but rather his oblivion to his progress with them. Infatuated by their ideas, he was blinded to his reality, in which Daisy had long been a changed person and his acquisition of possessions lent him no real joy. Still, Gatsby carried both pursuits with him up until his demise. Another idea that circulated among colonists was that the American Revolution was not one for America, but rather one for mankind. Never before had a country embraced liberty to the extent that colonists in the Americas were setting out to do. After years of envisioning various utopias, America would finally emerge as the pioneer of a radically new kind of society. Fulfilling John Winthrop’s “City upon on a hill” vision was in motion; many thought that liberty in America would lead to liberty in other places as well. This effect did ensue; nowadays, most countries have accepted the constitution model to outline their law. In seeing that the liberty dream did extend into the global sphere, one could say that the US fulfilled its own American Dream.

There’s a theme of give and take in my grandfather’s story. He had to make a lot of sacrifice in order to find opportunities and education in the US. Like Gatsby though, he had drive to make it work. It’s a Sunday. I enter the same house my dad and aunt grew up in, the same house I feel like my sister and cousins and I grew up in. I have so many memories there-- birthdays, anniversaries, Diwali parties, Christmas, even a wedding. And there sits my grandfather, watching the Packers game. He’s been a loyal fan since he first learned to love American football while studying engineering at Marquette. Sometimes I wonder if that was a genuine interest or just a part of his adapting to life here. My mom and I’ve come to scan some pictures to show my dad on his upcoming 50th birthday. The album glue has long expired, pictures falling out left and right. Many feature the same house, the same room even, that we are sitting in. They capture what I see has been a pretty incredible life. There’s no way my grandfather could have predicted this life when he first arrived, but he was willing to take the risk. The American Dream is something I see referenced all the time in my day-to-day. I grew up playing the “American Dream” board game with my dad and sister, trading stocks, buying patents, and trying to increase my income so I could win the game. But what is it, really? Is it the hope of moving to East Egg and finding great material wealth? Is it the willingness to sacrifice previous ties in the pursuit of education and opportunity? Is it the dream of comprehensive liberties- of rising up as a city on a hill for other nations to follow? The fact is, the idea encompasses a multitude of different experiences and end goals, reality often taking a different path than our first intention.

Works Cited