“But in any play, Act 2 is where the action is,” said Elliot. “In life as in a play, you can’t leap from Act 1 to Act 3. We skip Act 2 at our peril, for that’s when we go through the turmoil of confronting our demons—the selfishness, immorality, murderous thoughts, disastrous choices—so that when we enter Act 3, we have learned something. Fitzgerald was telling us that Americans are inclined to bypass Act 2; they don’t want to go through the pain that self-discovery requires.”
