I am not sure whether to consider teachers' yearly rereads of course literature as true rereads. Unless the teacher is repeating the text for his or her enjoyment or better understanding, I believe that teaching a book over and over again is not the same as reading it repeatedly. I firmly think that re-readable books must be either classics or very complicated, for the reread to be worth the candle.
I do agree with what Sonya Chung in supports in her review, The Great Gatsby Revisited, including the statement that "in Gatsby, Fitzgerald also gets the essential doubleness of human nature so terribly, perfectly right. Every character is pulled in (at least) two directions; love and hate, admiration and disdain, are of a piece in almost every relationship. And the reader ultimately feels an unresolved, and yet somehow perfectly coherent dividedness about each character." (Chung) Not only is this viewpoint observed within the text, but is also a reflexion of reality. We are always deciding between two things: to go this way or that way, be with these or those people, prioritize between this and that, and hundreds of other entertaining decisions which make life malleable and spontaneous. I often ponder what would or could have been.
In the end of The Great Gatsby, the characters ruefully condemn themselves while they nostalgically yearn what they could have had. They accept the wastefulness with which they had carried their lives, and they are saddened when they know that others will undoubtedly repeat their ignorant mistakes. People never make mistakes. Errors do not exist. We all know when we are doing something we will later regret. Apparently, people enjoy learning of the suffering caused by others' errors, which they commit themselves. This is a type of ironic humor which emphasizes our repressed truths. It is no coincidence that the book Secret Regrets has been one of the top Kindle downloads.
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