Second acts: Agree with F. Scott Fitzgerald? Inmates in 'The Wire'?
At left, convicted drug dealer D’Angelo Barksdale talks with other prison inmates in a book-discussion group about Fitzgerald’s novel, in a scene mid-way through the second season of the HBO series "The Wire." The discussion about Fitzgerald and second chances comes shortly before Barksdale’s past tragically catches up with him in prison.
There are no second acts in American lives,” according to F. Scott Fitzgerald in one of the most quoted lines in the whole of American literature.
No matter what Fitzgerald might have actually meant by the line (we’ll get to that by Friday), it’s often recited to mean that America is unforgiving, dog eat dog, make one mistake and you’re off the rails for good.
We know that isn’t true — certainly not in our political life. Bill Clinton had more than one chance. Lincoln became president after failing to win a Senate seat from Illinois. And the unfortunately named Anthony Weiner was leading the polls in New York City mayor’s race until his second act ended as the first one did.
But it really is true in some other ways, isn’t it? In one sign of the sentence’s enduring power, the great HBO drama, The Wire, shows a group of inmates working their way through Fitzgerald in a prison book club.
“He’s saying that the past is always with us,” according to drug dealer D’Angelo Barksdale. “Where we come from, what we go through, how we go through it — all that... matters... You can say you’re somebody new. You can give yourself a whole new story. But what came first is who you really are, and what happened before is what really happened.”
So which is it?
Do we get a second act?
Or is what came first who you really are?
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