The Great GatsbyBy F. Scott Fitzgerald1942 By Scribner180 pagesPaperbackGiven To Me By a TeacherCover Love: I don't particularly like this cover, but it does represent what the book is a little bit about. If you look at it in certain ways, that is.
Summary: 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.
My Thoughts: I read this book for class and ever since the movie came out I had been meaning to see it. It was good, not fantastic, but good. I kind of hated it in a way though, but that's just because of the way we broke the book down symbol-by-symbol, scene-by-scene. But if you're reading this book for pleasure, you probably will enjoy it. It's a fun, short read.
A bit dull at some points, but attention grabbing at others. And I read the book before I saw the movie, which ultimately made me understand the movie a bit more. I appreciated the characters more in the book, too. You grow attached to these people, but I hated them all. Every single one of them, yes, even Gatsby.
They were all arrogant and ignorant to the real problems in society. Although, that is the deal back in that time period, I hated them, regardless. But with this kind of classic, you can form your own opinions on the different problems. And even, the tragic end. I felt nothing towards it. I didn't feel anything to the end and after the final page, I felt nothing. Just that, it was good, but I wasn't emotionally attached to it like you are suppose to be with a good novel.
