The Great Gatsby

fitzgerald’s way of writing is awesome, but the plot could’ve been better

I've read this book SO many times and I love it more every single time. I simply adore it. I could talk about it all day long. It's beautiful, smart, multi-dimensional, sad...I love it.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is celebrated for its exploration of timeless themes, masterful use of symbolism, and rich character development. At its core, the novel critiques the American Dream, illustrating how its promise of prosperity and happiness can be corrupted by greed and superficiality. Gatsby himself embodies the pursuit of this dream — a man who rises from humble beginnings to immense wealth in hopes of reclaiming the love of his life, Daisy Buchanan. However, his dream is ultimately unattainable, as his vision of Daisy is an illusion, an idealized version that reality can never match. This disparity between illusion and reality is a central theme, emphasizing the dangers of living in a world of false hopes. Gatsby’s relentless pursuit highlights not only the fragility of dreams but also the emptiness that often accompanies material success.

The novel's setting in 1920s America, during the Roaring Twenties, provides a vivid backdrop for Fitzgerald's critique of excess and moral decay. The opulence of Gatsby's lavish parties — filled with music, dancing, and free-flowing champagne — contrasts sharply with the desolation of the Valley of Ashes, where the working class struggles amid industrial waste. This juxtaposition underscores the novel's commentary on class divisions and societal inequality. Characters like Tom and Daisy Buchanan represent the careless and entitled nature of the upper class, while George and Myrtle Wilson symbolize the desperation and hopelessness of the lower class. These societal contrasts create a framework for understanding the hollowness of wealth and privilege, where moral integrity is often sacrificed for personal gain.

Ultimately, The Great Gatsby endures because it captures the universal human experience of striving for something greater, often at the expense of recognizing what is real and meaningful. It is a novel about hope, love, and the inevitable disillusionment that follows when dreams collide with reality. Fitzgerald's exploration of these themes, combined with his elegant prose and sharp social insight, ensures that The Great Gatsby remains a poignant and thought-provoking work, relevant to readers across generations.

A love story like all great ones it's also a sad one. Love sick Gatsby pursues his love Daisy. Daisy is married to Tom after she couldnt wait for Gatsby anymore and has a daughter. Tom married to Daisy but doesnt respect or love her much and keeps Myrtle as his mistress. Nick, Daisy's cousin finds a friend in Gatsby and is the only one and true one who stays with Gatsby. And also story is narrated by him.

I couldnt relate to the 20's at all. I had the same feeling of loosing connection while i was reading "the breakfast at Tiffany" too. Some of the conversations were too touchy and i liked them too... But the story was ok overall.

I remember reading this in high school in the 90s and felt like the shallow, optimistic, materialistic, hedonistic, selfish society of the 20s was very similar to my current teenage 90s lifestyle. I also felt the warning throughout the book that things were going to crash. I also felt immense sorrow for the characters in the book who were all ultimately shallow, tragic, and alone, chasing after the promise of a beautiful life that money supposedly buys, only to watch it destroy everyone in its path. I just re-read this today at the age of 29, after the bust of the recession and the post-911 world where everybody is trying to get rich and famous quickly through the media and bad behavior. The book reads just as true to me now as it did then and after years of attending private universities and attempting to make a career in our failing economy that continues to encourage the "have"'s, I have come across people that greatly resemble Gatsby characters. Fitzgeralds prose is beautiful, so much of this book is quotable, and his social satire is biting, while his message remains just as relatable today as it was then.

Necesité 3 intentos para terminar El gran Gatsby.

Tal vez porque conocía la historia por las películas, nunca leí más allá de un par de páginas. Hoy lo hice, estoy muy feliz por ello. Puede resumir sentimientos complejos de la vida real como nadie.

El mensaje también es conmovedor.

Pobrecito Gatsby, creías en el sueño americano, creías en el amor, creías en todas las historias románticas y en las historias románticas, creías que podías pretender ascender. Que tu dinero te daría clase.

Pero todo lo que necesitaba era una confrontación con Tom y tu castillo de naipes, tu imagen de cristal se hizo mil pedazos.

Daisy ni siquiera estuvo nunca en tu mismo universo. Ella ES dinero, tu simplemente lo tienes temporalmente.

Moriste solo, olvidado, descartado. Al mundo nunca le importaste realmente.

El libro golpea duro.

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Flawed individuals add a realism to a book.

Beautiful prose but awfully boring story and unlikable characters

I read about 1/4 of this book for school then got lazy and never finished it. I enjoyed what I did read though. Maybe I’ll come back to it some day lol

There was music from my neighbour’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.

2023 review: I take it back, I

do understand why this is a classic: because it’s taught in schools: and it’s taught in schools because it’s short, easy to read, subtle as being hit upside the head, and empty enough to invite endless speculation about the characters. There is no subtext, no nuance, no depth. It’s a soap opera with paper-thin players who do not change and do not intrigue because there is nothing

there to start with.

On rereading, I actually liked

The Great Gatsby much more than I did the first time, hence the three-star rating (up from two stars). Fitzgerald’s prose is crystal clear, and he imbues such movement and color in each scene that it’s easy to get swept up in the atmosphere. And what an atmosphere it is! Be it a garage in the ash-heaps or a sweltering hotel room or each bombastic party overflowing with champagne and light, each setting has a tangibility to it that not many writers accomplish. (I am less enchanted by Fitzgerald’s many aphorisms, which try to add depth and a degree of profundity that the novel otherwise can’t support.)

However: while I liked reading it more this time, I am also more solidly convinced that it is not a good novel. Because atmosphere aside, unfortunately, there are the characters. Nick and Jordan are the only two interesting people because they are the only ones who retain some mystery, whose backstories aren’t dully recounted beat-for-beat, who aren’t explained into two dimensions. The rest are completely flat: Tom is the brute, Gatsby the lovesick puppy, Daisy the indecisive beaten-down wife. Daisy is, in fact, the actual worst of the lot: I don’t believe she ever said

“I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” or

“It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts before” or

“You always look so cool” or any of the numerous other ridiculous little pieces of nonsense that no real person would ever say in that context. Because Daisy is not a real person. None of them are.

I’ve tried it twice now. It’s so short and insubstantial that, who knows, maybe in a decade I’ll try it again to see what I missed. But for the foreseeable future, color me unimpressed.

Some favorite passages:

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew.

A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

“Anyhow, he gives large parties,” said Jordan, changing the subject with an urban distaste for the concrete. “And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”

“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.”

An hour later the front door opened nervously, and Gatsby in a white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold-coloured tie, hurried in.

outside Gatsby’s window it began to rain again, so we stood in a row looking at the corrugated surface of the Sound.

that voice was a deathless song.

A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing.

“She’s got an indiscreet voice,” I remarked. “It’s full of—” I hesitated. “Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly. That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it …

Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coat’s shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand. So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.

It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy—it increased her value in his eyes.

Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine; the wicker of the settee squeaked fashionably as she turned toward him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth. She had caught a cold, and it made her voice huskier and more charming than ever, and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.

He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about … like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made …

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic 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 further …

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

2020 review: 2 stars

I don't understand why this is considered a classic.

Fitzgerald's prose is beautiful at times, there's no denying that, and his scenes are wonderfully atmospheric: I loved reading his glamorous descriptions of the parties at Gatsby's mansion, from the overall ambiance down to the littlest details like the woman in the yellow dress crying while playing the piano.

Unfortunately, the characters were one-dimensional and horrifically dull (an amazing accomplishment given all the scandal).

Why does Gatsby love Daisy? Because he does. Why does Daisy love Gatsby? Because she does. Why does Nick love Jordan? Because he does. Why does Tom care about Daisy? Because he does. Why does Tom have an affair with Myrtle? Because he does. Why does Daisy decide to stay with Tom? Because she does.

These questions should have been the heart and soul of this story, but instead Fitzgerald left them unaddressed.

There's no real plot, no sense of urgency, no real stakes. At no point did I feel invested in anything that was happening, and, as a result, this novel had zero emotional impact on me. In a word, this novel was vapid.

At least it was short.