New York Column
By Hannah Thorp
Appearance Versus Content
New York City, a place which i frequently visit is full of deception. A Beautiful City glittering with brilliant lights is what is seen. A city crawling with people, life, and dreams is what we see. But what lies beneath this beautiful, vivacious picture? A racist community with dishonest people lacking strong morals. The appearance is remarkably different from the content.
Another common false judgment is marriage. the one promise no one should ever break is a promise that is frequently shattered. A marriage may have a pleasant and faithful surface, but what hides beneath is a truth not so lovely. An example of this is the marriage between two of my dearest friends, Daisy and Tom. They are always polite and pleasant to each other in front of guests, but once i dug a little deeper i found that Tom was unfaithful to Daisy and Daisy was unhappy. It is wrong that we find the surface appearance suitable for judgment and not the realistic content.
Jordan is a beautiful woman whom i used to see. i was attracted to her for her looks and that she claimed to be one of the few honest people she knew. As i learned more about her, the content of her personality became clear. She proved herself to be dishonest and rather selfish, which i did not like so much, but Jordan was so beautiful and i was so attracted to her that it was very hard to leave her. However, her beauty was not enough to keep me captivated. Surely we've all had a Jordan in our lives.
We've all had Gatsbys in our lives too. My final example of deceiving appearances is The Great Gatsby himself. On my first impression of Gatsby i saw a hansom man who was popular and very wealthy. He had parties every weekend and he claimed to have gotten his education from Oxford University. As we began to talk and grow close, i found that he was dishonest when he said he attended Oxford and he was lovesick for Daisy, whom he had previously been in a relationship before she got married to Tom, which is not something i would have expected. He was not the honest, successful, and happy person i assumed him to be.
Judgments are a tricky concept and appearance is a common deception. We should do our best, however, to not allow ourselves to be deceived by the way someone or something appears. the content of friendships, relationships, and even communities are often different from the way they appear. If we want an accurate judgment, we cannot allow ourselves to accept a judgement which is not truthful and based purely on appearance.
-Nick Carraway