The Journal of Go... Dr. Eckleburg

Katie unearthed this rare copy of the journal of Doctor T.J.Eckleburg, one of the more explicitly symbolic characters in The Great Gatsby.

The Journal of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg

June 2, 1922
Everybody sins. And I am the one who gets to see all of it. Like Mrs. Stanford is having an affair with her doorman. Mr. Erikson runs a secret life as a bootlegger. Ms Mills has been having just a little too much to drink for the past decade. So like I said, I see everything and I judge everyone. Think of me as god if you will. Since we’re on the topic of sins, adultery is a major one and Tom Buchanan knows this well. He has been having an affair with Myrtle, Wilson’s wife, for quite some time now. Either they do not see it or they are too dumb to care, but eventually all of this will end in tragedy.

June 12, 1922
They do not see me at the parties but I am always there. Mr. Gatsby’s parties are seen as lavish and excellent and it is an honor to be invited. But nobody knows the real Gatsby. He has no real friends, the closest one being Nick Carraway. People seem to think he is some kind of mysterious entity who is a first class citizen. But the truth is that Gatsby lives another life as a bootlegger. Palling around with other felons. And he lives completely isolated and he holds on to his past with an iron fist. Anyone could see that that will leave to no good. I guess they will just have to wait to find out. By then it will be too late and everyone will realize that everything comes back to you in the end.

June 27, 1992
Jordan Baker is another person in this city who has some issues in her past that she needs to be given redemption for. She is an old professional golf player who cheated in one of her games. Honesty is one of the most imperative traits that man needs to live a good life. It disappoints me to no end to see everyone in this forsaken city running around lying and cheating, without any regard to their human counterparts. Honesty takes courage and bravery that not every person has. The closest person that I can think of that is honest is Nick Caraway. And honesty is not just with other people it involves being honest with yourself. This is something that Gatsby could never do. He let Daisy be the death of him because he could not be honest with himself and realize that he would and could never be with Daisy.

July 2, 1922
Wilson was an idiot. He never stood up for himself, never tried to win his wife back and never even just left her because he had had enough. No, he chose to remain blind and ignorant and because of this, his wife Myrtle ended up being killed in a car accident. The rich are reckless. They know no other way of living. Daisy and Tom stayed together because they were two parts of the same whole. They were both careless of other’s feelings and both of them were in it for the money. Especially Daisy, she even said so. When I heard that I was not shocked. I do not think anything in this city would shock me anymore.

Journal Explanation
I thought it would be interesting to write a few journal entries from the perspective of Doctor Eckleburg because he was the constant looming presence throughout the entire novel. To write as him, I had to try and write with no biases and just describe what I wanted to see in a completely straight forward manner. This is because the Doctor is like the God figure in the book. He watches over everyone and sees everything that happens and he has a judgmental and brutally honest opinion. I wrote an entry where he talks about honesty a lot because I thought this would be a trait that he values very much since he holds everyone up to such high standards.