The Yachts

"The Yachts" in Relation to The Great Gatsby

The Upper Class always wins while the Lower Class Struggles Against the Current

The people living on East Egg and West Egg represent 2 social classes in The Great Gatsby. Although both locations are wealthy and exquisite, affluent people with inherited money are denizen of East Egg, whereas, newly rich people who worked for their money live on West Egg. East Eggers act in a haughty manner that displays their superiority to the rest of the world, often boasting over which Ivy League schools they attended and so on. However, they display their wealth in a way that they are not trying to prove anything to anyone, unlike the West Eggers. Because most of the people who live on West Egg were not born into supremacy, they, in essence, want to prove to people that they are wealthy, and often try to pass as something that they are not. F. Scott Fitzgerald argues that this futile drive to be the wealthiest is ultimately detrimental to a person. Similarly, William Carlos Williams expresses the same belief throughout his poem, "The Yachts":

contend in a sea which the land partly encloses

shielding them from the too-heavy blows

of an ungoverned ocean which when it chooses

tortures the biggest hulls, the best man knows

to pit against its beatings, and sinks them pitilessly.

Mothlike in mists, scintillant in the minute

brilliance of cloudless days, with broad bellying sails

they glide to the wind tossing green water

from their sharp prows while over them the crew crawls

ant-like, solicitously grooming them, releasing,

making fast as they turn, lean far over and having

caught the wind again, side by side, head for the mark.

In a well guarded arena of open water surrounded by

lesser and greater craft which, sycophant, lumbering

and flittering follow them, they appear youthful, rare

as the light of a happy eye, live with the grace

of all that in the mind is feckless, free and

naturally to be desired. Now the sea which holds them

is moody, lapping their glossy sides, as if feeling

for some slightest flaw but fails completely.

Today no race. Then the wind comes again. The yachts

move, jockeying for a start, the signal is set and they

are off. Now the waves strike at them but they are too

well made, they slip through, though they take in canvas.

Arms with hands grasping seek to clutch at the prows.

Bodies thrown recklessly in the way are cut aside.

It is a sea of faces about them in agony, in despair

until the horror of the race dawns staggering the mind;

the whole sea become an entanglement of watery bodies

lost to the world bearing what they cannot hold. Broken,

beaten, desolate, reaching from the dead to be taken up

they cry out, failing, failing! their cries rising

in waves still as the skillful yachts pass over.

The Yacht

The biggest hull

These 2 different classes are portrayed in “The Yachts.” Williams compares the “scintillant” and “skillful” yachts to the “sycophant” and “lumbering” lesser and greater crafts in a way that suggests that the yachts are superior and will always win. When looking at this poem deeper, it is clear that Williams is metaphorically comparing boats to social classes in American society. The yachts, representing the wealthy upper class, seem to never let the lesser and greater hulls, representing the lower class, have a chance. When the race is described between the 2 boats in the poem, a ghastly defeat by the yachts is also described, leaving the lower classes “beaten, desolate, and reaching from the dead to be taken up.”

Daisy Buchanan

The Yachts that Williams describes are similar to Daisy in the novel. Daisy views herself and East Egg as superior to the rest of the world, and after she goes to one of Gatsby's parties, she "was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented 'place'...appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short-cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand" (107). The cavalier attitude that Daisy has effects how she views others that are different than her. Even though the people living on West Egg are still wealthy, she finds it abhorrent that anyone could make it in society by starting with "nothing," and cannot even relate to their provincial minds. Similarly, in the poem, Williams suggests that the highest class in society will always have an easier time that anyone below them, because the ocean "chooses" when it gets to weaken the "biggest hulls."

Gatsby after he is shot by Wilson

The lower class addressed in the poem can be related to characters such as Myrtle Wilson and Jay Gatsby. Although Gatsby is a wealthy man, the fact that he started from nothing is unappealing to the East Eggers, thus making him seem as if he is trying to 'pass' as something that he is not. In the eyes of the East Eggers, this is just as bad as being categorized as the lower class. Gatsby's constant striving to pass as a person of high importance is seen when he falls in love with the rich lifestyle, or merely, the idea of a rich lifestyle. He loves the dream of having such elegance and wealth, and does anything he can to learn how to be like the upper class. Nick says, "To young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, that yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world" (100). Williams shares this same flawless desire when he describes the yachts in his poem with such high regards. Even though the sea rubs the sides of the yacht "as of feeling for some slightest flaw, it fails completely."

Myrtle Wilson

Myrtle Wilson also represents a lower class citizen trying to raise her status in society as well. Myrtle is the mistress of Tom Buchanan, and does this as a means by which she can get higher in society and, like Gatsby, try to pass as something that she is not. When Myrtle is accidentally run over by Daisy, she is instantly dead, and her mouth is described as "wide open and ripped at the corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long" (137). Myrtle sees something beautiful in the idea of changing social classes and that is why she strives so hard to and makes it her dream to ultimately change classes herself. The "vitality" and life that she procured is now no longer there, and Myrtle is lifeless, just like the greater hulls in "The Yachts." The lesser boats are left "in waves still as the skillful yachts pass over," Just as Myrtle is left dead in the middle of the road while Daisy drives over her.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" (180).

This last line in the book suggests that just like boats, people in society try to go against the current or the natural flow of the way that something should be- thus resulting similarly to how it does in The Great Gatsby and "The Yachts"- detrimentally.