An epic failure

Today in English class, my teacher played this documentary about Scot Fitzgerald because we are reading the book The Great Gatsby. In this documentary it was seriously one of the most depressing documentaries I have ever seen, and in my mind. I questioned why we seriously watched this film. This film really made me not want to read the book even more now. Don't get me wrong. Though I have not read this book, I might like it. This is just some of my thoughts on the author of the book.

In the film that was played, it explained Fitzgerald's life. Which basically said in every scene that he was a total failure in his life. So, that made me think, "if he is a failure, why the hell are we reading his book?" My answer came to me, and though he was a failure at life, he was a good writer. I have not read his novel so, I can't tell for myself. Also this is not a blog about the books he wrote this is a blog about the documentary I just watched today. So, just how was he a failure?

For starters, he never thought of himself as a normal person. He always had this dream of being someone he wasn't. Which in his mind, made him a failure. Him trying to be somebody he wasn't, made him fail at the things he wants to do. He never made much of his life. He joined the Army, and was discharged because he never got to see battle. Now to me, he joined to help protect the United States of America, to keep the honour and states together. Because if the United States would not have gone to war in World War 1, America might have lost some of its states by Mexico. This does not make him a failure, but he thought it did, and he cried, and went to writing.

He met a girl, that he was going to get married to, but the girl bailed out on him, because he had no job, and was not much of a man to provide for a wife. She then lift him. So he cried some more, and then he wrote his first novel, which was a good novel. In which the girl returned to him and said, "Well, now that you are rich and famous, I will marry you." In my mind, how the heck would he take someone like that back? Some gold digging girl only cares of you are rich, not about the fact that she loves you. This is one thing that made him a failure is the stupid choices he made.

The rest on the video after this I spaced out on because I just didn't care for the movie, or Scot Fitzgerald. I don't think that there is a point in watching a documentary about a failure who wrote a good book. Who the hell cares? There are thousands upon thousands of good writers out there in the world, and we focus out school curriculum on a failure in life? On top of that, I would not have known he was a failure in life if it wasn't for the video. It's part of the school curriculum to play this video. I believe that this video needs to go, or this book needs to be removed from the curriculum. We should be reading better things than The Great Gatsby. We need to be focusing on better reads like Shakespeare, where we really read something good.

All the years that I have read a Shakespeare in my High School Education the plays were excellent.
Romeo and Juliet, though how pointless the play is to life today, it is a great read.
Macbeth, Great read in general.

We should not focus on just a failure who wrote a good book. We should focus on a successful writer, with successful books.

Now this is just my opinion. What is yours?