The Great Gatsby

[Built To Last]

The Great Gatsby is possibly the best book I have ever read. The Story follows socialite Jay Gatsby in his attempt to regain the heart of his first love.

However to describe the book as such feels like doing a disservice. Never before has a book made an impact on me as much as TGG has. The book analyzes how we view events in our past, and our attempts to reclaim them. It examines the upper class and questions their validity. Most importantly, in my opinion, the book explores the nature of hope and desire.

Highly reccomended.

[Tre!nt]

you're in high school aren't you?

[Iskalla]

It's one of those standards, almost mandatory reading. I enjoyed it, it took me some getting into and it got me listening to 1920's dance and jazz music when I started to enjoy it haha. Reading Norwegian Wood inspired me to pick up a copy.

[007GoldenShower]

you're in high school aren't you?

You're a massive pseudo-intellectual pillowbiter, aren't you?

[Dr. Awkward]

I couldn't really get into it at all. To me it's just like Catcher in the Rye in that it wasn't by any means a bad book but I can't understand for the life of me why so many people blow a load over it.

[Iskalla]

I couldn't really get into it at all. To me it's just like Catcher in the Rye in that it wasn't by any means a bad book but I can't understand for the life of me why so many people blow a load over it.

The narrative did it for me with The Great Gatsby, it was an enjoyable story and a colourful depiction of that era. Nothing profound but enjoyable to escape into. Howards End has the same effect, only I much prefer Howards End to both Catcher in the Rye and Great Gatsby combined. In fact, it's been a while since I last read it...

[Euda]

It's one of my favourite books. Gatsby is an amazing character. Do you feel like you can you trust the narrator in The Great Gatsby?

[PirateJoe]

One of the interesting things about this book, often hailed as one of the best novels ever written, is the parallels that can be drawn to Citizen Kane, often hailed as one of the best movies ever produced. America seems to have a collective hardon for wealthy businessmen who grow up poor and die unfulfilled.

[Iskalla]

One of the interesting things about this book, often hailed as one of the best novels ever written, is the parallels that can be drawn to Citizen Kane, often hailed as one of the best movies ever produced. America seems to have a collective hardon for wealthy businessmen who grow up poor and die unfulfilled.

That made me think of 'Death of a Salesman'.

[Tunicate]

I couldn't really get into it at all. To me it's just like Catcher in the Rye in that it wasn't by any means a bad book but I can't understand for the life of me why so many people blow a load over it.

this. But I just sold a copy in my online book store, so woohoo

[PirateJoe]

That made me think of 'Death of a Salesman'.

Coincidentally, often hailed as one of the best plays ever written (by an american in modern times).

[Midnight Sun]

i had to read the great gatsby in high school

it was boring as shit, dunno how anyone could ever see that as "great"

[calatron]

So I says to Mabel I says... there are better books.

[The Jitterskull]

I enjoyed the book and movie, but I can't see how it's considered the 'best' in that field. It was good, but not mind-blowingly amazing.

[mrparks]

you're in high school aren't you?

Heh. I was myspace stalking a chick from highschool, and she listed all the books from assigned reading in her favorite books list.

Not even Harry Potter.

[LiquidIce]

The story was kinda of mediocre, but still good. What I liked most about the book was the language used, it created a great atmosphere and was very climatic.

[supperrfreek]

I must say that for a time I entertained an admiration for Gatsby which still persists to this day –*although most of it has died off by now.

[HeWhoNeverSleeps]

The story was kinda of mediocre, but still good. What I liked most about the book was the language used, it created a great atmosphere and was very climatic.

This.


While it captured the literancy of that age, I just couldn't get into it as most people it did during my high school years.

[33% God]

Great Gatsby Vagina.

[Built To Last]

The first reason Gatsby is such a great book, is due to Fitzgerald's amazing writing ability. Case in point:

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.

Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something - an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man's, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.

You'd be hard pressed to find better prose than that which is found in Fitzgerald's writing.

The second reason Gatsby is such a great book is because of it's profundity. I think a lot of people that read Gatsby take the book at face value and in doing so fail to recognize the overarching theme of the book. Of course, this is in no way helped by scores of high school english teachers telling their students what to get out of the book (and IMO they are often blatantly wrong as to the book's theme). But I digress.

[Built To Last]

At face value the book may appear to be about the American Dream, living an unfulfilled life, or the futility of trying to reclaim the past. But these "themes" are really just skirting around the real issue. The Great Gatsby, at it's deepest level is a novel about the nature hope.

Let's start from the begining. Around the time that Gatsby was written, two of the major literary influences were Marx's Communist Manifesto and Darwin's Origin of Species. It is important to know this because these two works shape Gatsby. It is also important to know that Gatsby is written after WWI. It is no coincidence that the writers of this era were known as the Lost Generation.

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx makes the claim that people are defined by their struggles. The Proletariat are defined by their relationship to the Bourgeois, the poor in relation to the rich, and in the case of TGG, those who have hope in relation to those who do not. Gatsby of course has hope. His desire to be with Daisy has completely shaped the course of his life. Daisy IS Gatsby's struggle. But now, think about Tom and Daisy. What struggle do Tom and Daisy have? They have none. They are content to go on living their rich, upper class life, and if trouble arises running away from it. Fitzgerald is criticizing the upper class by saying they have no struggle by which to define themselves. Tom and Daisy (and the upper class) eschew difficulty and struggle.

This abstinence makes Tom and Daisy fake, whereas Gatsby is real. Recall the scene of the first Gatsby party Nick attends. Remeber the guy in the library who is so amazed that the books in Gatsby's library are real? He's really just a metaphor, saying that Gatsby has content and is defined (in other words, has a struggle ;) ) while the other rich people do not. Their libraries are full of fake cardboard books. And in the end who is the only guest to attend Gatsby's funeral? The only person besides Nick that saw that Gatsby was real: the man in the library.

Let's move on to the other two influences in the book, WWI and Darwin. As I said earlier, TGG is about the nature of hope. This book is so different, because at the end, the good guy (the only REAL person in the book), does not get the girl.

Gatsby is great if only because he is so thoroughly human. He has hope. We cannot fault him for that. Neither can we fault Tom and Daisy for doing what they do. But it disgusts me as a human being, that Gatsby, who so innocently has a hope and a dream, can end up like he did.

Darwin's Origin of Species introduced the idea that God is not necessary in one's conception of the universe. We find this theme in Gatsby because we realize that the good guy doesn't get the girl. We realize that there is nothing that says that at the end of the day justice will happen and goodness will prevail over evil. We realize that God is not moderating this game of life, that we are all just boats set adrift at sea, beating against the current.

Of course, this a theme one can expect from a generation that has just seen the destruction of a world war. This generation was at a loss for how the human race could do this to themselves. TGG is Fitzgerald's answer to that question. Human beings have always been destroying one another's utopian hopes.

And this my friends is why Gatsby is Great. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

[Zay]

When I had to read it in high school, I was the only one in the class that actually liked it. Everyone else kept bitching. Like someone above mentioned, it was the prose that did it for me. One particular passage described a dude saying something and going "ummm" and twirling his finger in the air to fill in the missing noun. The way he describes things is very lucid and is what got me to read This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and the Damned.

[Zanick]

I agree that it's well written. Fitzgerald was a fantastic writer. But I fucking hated that book. While I realize that it makes valid and intelligent social commentary on rich people and their fancy fucking parties, and does this by suggestion of what lies beneath all of it, I still don't want to sit for hours reading about rich people and their fancy fucking parties.