About the Book:

In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write “something new–something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned.” That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald’s finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author’s generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald’s–and his country’s–most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning–” Gatsby’s rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.

It’s also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby’s quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means–and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. “Her voice is full of money,” Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel’s more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy’s patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.

Book Review:  ★★★★★★

Have you ever had the opportunity to go back and reread something from high school or college — something you had pretty good memories about?  But when you got into it you found yourself wondering what it was about the book that you particularly loved in the first place?  Such was my most recent experience reading this great “American Classic.”  Don’t get me wrong — Fitzgerald demonstrated a masterful ability to present the American society in the change of great transition, and he brought to the forefront the magnitude of what many of those changes meant to the American culture through his impassioned, and deliberately shallow characters.  But I have forgotten what a train wreck of a story this particular book really was.  I know when I originally read it I remember thinking what a great tragic romance — and I seemed to come away seeing Gatsby and Daisy on the same level as the original star crossed lovers — Romeo and Juliet.  Now, with a very different point of view, and a much older understanding I come away from this book shaking my head at some of the subtleties that Fitzgerald presents in this little book.

I was very impressed with the presentation of the irresponsibility of a society that refused to take responsibility for their own actions.  Tom, the man that sets the entire tragedy of events in motion through his taking of a mistress is the great centerpiece of this book.  And while most people feel that the real tragedy is Jay Gatsby — by the end of this read through I wasn’t so sure.  Gatsby was certainly a victim.  However, Tom is the ultimate in all consuming ego.  His perception of there being nothing of value beyond his own world of money, and his concept that money can buy anything and everything that he could ever want or need is the base of this immoral character.  And it is through everyone of his immoral actions that the ultimate tragedy — the deaths of those that he was trying to hold on to that lead to the overwhelming conclusion of this horrifying tale.  And yet, it was the irony that of everyone he managed to destroy — Wilson, his mistress, Gatsby, and I think to a degree even Daisy’s love for him — the most unforeseen of events were the result of Daisy’s actions — and not those of Tom.  Tom could never destroy the man he wanted out of his wife’s life — only Daisy had the capacity to do that.  And it was through her lack of moral character that she managed to accomplish that feat in spades.

I was also really impressed with the presentation of the dramatic divisions that exist within the American society.  And while we like to claim that we are a society that grew without classes, this book is a strong testament to the falsity of that claim.  Money, race, moral character, geography, professions — all of these and more we have used to divide our unusual society into one of sharp division, and vast diversity.  We may like to claim that anyone can become a millionaire in this country — but that doesn’t exactly tear down the barriers that exist, and that will continue to keep us divided from those that don’t consider us worth of belonging to their perceived group of social elite.  Gatsby is probably one of the greatest examples of a “lame duck” character that I have ever seen.  Everything he does — everything he is — will never be good enough to buy him into the one home that he wants desperately to be invited into.  And yet — as Nick reminds him on more than one occasion — that one home may not be as great a place to be as Gatsby always seemed to believe.  Combine that with the overwhelming feeling of fatalistic foreboding that exists in this book, beginning to end, and I came away amazed that this is given to high school students to read — when they have not yet lived long enough to understand the subtleties that are going on in the back story.

Tags: America, Classic Literature, Classics, Family, Friendship, Historical Fiction, Loss, Love, Morality, Romance

Category: Classics, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Romance