Casual, self-absorbed decadence, the evaporation of social grace, money calling all the shots and memories of the past holding people hostage from the future that lies before them. Yes, Mr. Fitzgerald has nailed it and written one of THE great American novels. This book was a surprise. I LOVED it and all of the deep contradictions swimming around its heart. At once a scathing indictment on the erosion of the American Dream, but also a bittersweet love letter to the unfailing optimism of the American people. Call it dignified futility…obstinate hopefulness. Whatever you call it, this novel is shiny and gorgeous, written with a sort of breezy pretension that seems to mirror the loose morality of the story. Rarely have I come across a book whose style so perfectly enhances its subject matter. Set in the eastern United States just after World War I, Fitzgerald shows us an America that has lost its moral compass. This fall from grace is demonstrated through the lives of a handful of cynical “well-to-dos” living lavish but meaningless lives that focus on nothing but the pursuit of their own pleasures and whims. Standing apart from these happenings (while still being part of them) is our narrator, Nick Carraway. As the one honest and decent person in the story, Nick stands in stark contrast to the other characters. “Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.” Nick relays the story of the summer he spent in Long Island’s West Egg in a small house sandwiched between the much larger mansions of the area. His time in Long Island is spent with a group that includes his second cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her rich husband Tom who live in Long Island’s East Egg. At one point in the story, Nick provides the following description of the pair which I do not think can be improved upon: 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. In addition, we have Jordan Baker who is a poster child for the pretty, amoral, self-centered rich girl whose view of the world is jaded and unsentimental. Basically, she’s a bitch.The most intriguing character by far is Jay Gatsby himself, both for who he is and for how Fitzgerald develops him through the course of the narrative. When we are first introduced to Gatsby, he comes across as a polite, gracious, well-mannered gentleman with a magnetic personality who our narrator takes to immediately. He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself. However, from that very first encounter, Fitzgerald slowly chips away at the persona and peels back the layers of the “Great” Gatsby until we are left with a flawed and deeply tragic figure that in my opinion ranks among the most memorable in all of classic literature. Nick’s journey in his relationship with Gatsby mirrors our own. “It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.”Through a series of parties, affairs, beatings, drunken escapades, the lives of the characters intermesh with terrible consequences. I don’t want to give away major parts of the story as I think they are best experienced for the first time fresh, but at the heart of Fitzgerald’s morality tale is a tragic love that for me rivaled the emotional devastation I felt at the doomed relationship of Heathcliff and Catherine in Wuthering Heights. In general, Fitzgerald’s world of excessive jubilance and debauchery is a mask that the characters wear to avoid the quiet torments that haunt them whenever they are forced to take stock of their actions. Rather than do this, they simply keep moving. "I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life." In the end, Fitzgerald manages the amazing feat of creating a sad, bleak portrait of America while maintaining a sense of restrained optimism in the future. Both heart-wrenching and strangely comforting at the same time. I guess in the end, this was a book that made me feel a lot and that is all I can ever ask. I’m going to wrap this up with my second favorite quote from the book (my favorite being the one at the very beginning of the review): And as I sat there, brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out Daisy's light at the end of his dock. He had come such a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close he could hardly fail to grasp it. But what he did not know was that it was already behind him, somewhere in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. 5.0 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!
Check out the new trailer for the forthcoming release of the Movie in 2013 @ http://more2read.com/review/the-great-gatsby-by-f-scott-fitzgerald/Gatsby, Jay a millionaire who just throws his money around a tycoon of sorts bites off more than he can chew. Fitzgerald is trying to show us maybe how shallow these rich characters are how they play against each other and how their friendships are paper thin badgered by suspicions, envy and jealousy. Gatsby leads a lavish and hedonistic lifestyle. The protagonist strikes some similarities to what i have heard of Fitzgerald's lifestyle. The author writes with a nice writing prose. Adapted to screen four times and another movie on the way with Di'caprio, what's the attraction with this story? Do we envy their lives, do we maybe look at them and say well I would do things different do it better and have a different partner, spend that money in other ways? Well thats the beauty of stories sometimes we get some food for thought.Last few sentences of the novel.."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 farther.... And one fine morning---- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Some trivia about the authorHis wife, Zelda Fitzgerald, died eight years after he did, in a fire at the mental hospital where she was institutionalized.Died of a heart attack in Hollywood while writing "The Last Tycoon", a novel that was published unfinished.First novel was 'This Side of Paradise', written shortly after attending PrincetonThe Gatsby Style, named for his 1925 novel "The Great Gatsby", was honored on one of fifteen 32¢ US commemorative postage stamps in the Celebrate the Century series, issued 28 May 1998, celebrating the 1920s.He tried writing movie scripts but was frustrated by the image-based medium, which he had difficulty comprehending as it was so different from the language-based forms of the novel and short-story that he excelled in.Was a mentor and close friend of the young Ernest Hemingway, who grew more distant with him as Hemingway's fame grew and Fitzgerald's declined and he became increasingly more dependent on alcohol. Hemingway disapproved of Fitzgerald's lowering his great talent to write high-priced stories for slick commercial magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and his sojourns to Hollywood to make money writing screenplays. Unlike his great contemporaries Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and John Steinbeck, Hemingway never wrote for the movies, but he had no objection to selling his novels and short stories to the studios.Coined the term the Jazz Age in reference to the Roaring Twenties.Is portrayed by Malcolm Gets in "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle"He was nominated in the 2007 inaugural New Jersey Hall of Fame for his services to literature.Is buried at St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery in Rockville, MarylandThe Author Fitzgerald and the family. Some info i found about the many movies.The Great Gatsby has been filmed six times and is being filmed for a seventh:1. The Great Gatsby, in 1926 by Herbert Brenon – a silent movie of a stage adaptation, starring Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson, and William Powell. It is a famous example of a lost film. Reviews suggest that it may have been the most faithful adaptation of the novel, but a trailer of the film at National Archives is all that is known to exist.2. The Great Gatsby, in 1949 by Elliott Nugent – starring Alan Ladd, Betty Field, and Shelley Winters; for copyright reasons, this film is not readily available.3. The Great Gatsby, in 1974, by Jack Clayton – the most famous screen version, starring Sam Waterston as narrator Nick Carraway, with Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan and Robert Redford as Gatsby, with a script by Francis Ford Coppola.4. The Great Gatsby, in 2000 by Robert Markowitz – a made-for-TV movie starring Toby Stephens, Paul Rudd and Mira Sorvino.5. G, in 2002 by Christopher Scott Cherot - a modernized, loosely based adaptation starring Richard T. Jones, Blair Underwood, and Chenoa Maxwell.6. The Great Gatsby, in 2007 by Lee Kang-hoon – a Korean adaptation starring Kang Kyeong-joon, Park Ye-jin and MC Mong.7. The Great Gatsby, to be directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire, Isla Fisher, Elizabeth Debicki, and Joel Edgerton. Luhrmann purchased the rights in 2008.Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire were the first to be cast, as Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway respectively. In November 2010, Luhrmann selected Mulligan to portray Daisy Buchanan.In April 2011, Isla Fisher was offered the role of Myrtle Wilson. In May, the Australian newcomer Elizabeth Debicki landed the role of Jordan Baker, while Joel Edgerton was cast as Tom Buchanan, a role which Luhrmann initially intended for Ben Affleck. Pre-production began in Sydney, Australia in March 2011 and the film is scheduled to film in 3D from August for 17 weeks, followed by an additional thirty weeks of post-production, with a view to a 2012 release.The more known movie so far, Lets hope DiCaprio does a good job playing Jay Gatsby.http://more2read.com/?review=the-great-gatsby-by-f-scott-fitzgerald
What do You think about The Great Gatsby (2015)?
Final rating: 3.5/5 stars “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” This book was quite a new experience. It's full of metaphors and symbolism but i still have no idea what to think of it. The main problem i had with this book was the focusing of time and space around them... I often found myself confused because of that and that is the reason i couldn't rate it higher (maybe it was because of translation, i don't know...). It also took me a great amount of time fully understand the characters & the relationships between them. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” This book is about Gatsby, but not from his perspective but from the perspective of his would be friend, Nick. And this is a story of how Gatsby perused a dream. And how that dream ended. In a cruel reality. “No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.” Meet our Mr. Gatsby~ He is wealthy, he throws expensive parties where everyone is invited, but no one knows who he really is. People around him never knew about his life and therefore speculated many things about him. One thing that you as a reader should know is the scheme of relationships between characters: Gatsby and Nick are neighbors. Nick and Daisy are cousins. Jordan and Daisy are friends. Jordan and Nick are dating (?). Daisy is married to Tom, and Tom is having an affair with the wife of George Wilson, Myrtle Wilson. And now comes the main point of the story => Gatsby is in love/obsessed with Daisy. A woman who can't be his. He has known her for a long time, and she was to him the perfection, the golden ticket he longed for. She represented status, wealth and influence, the things he always wanted. Because, he wasn't always wealthy man - although now he is one. And that is why their relationship to me represents a sort of capitalism (Daisy) and consumerism (Gatsby) - probably because of this: (view spoiler)[ capitalism ruins consumerists while consumerism builds capitalism... just like their relationship... (hide spoiler)]
—Kristalia
Apparently the colors yellow and white represent sickness and goodness, respectively. I learned this from my Honors English friends after I had read the book on my own, and was very thankful I didn't have to read this for a class and be forced to write papers analyzing the terrifically brilliant symbolism and prose etc etc. It would have completed ruined an otherwise extremely good and exciting story.PS: The character Daisy appears good and innocent, but at her core is actually rotted and evil. Daisies are white on the outside and yellow on the inside. DO! YOU! SEE!
—Madeline
Great.Now I'm getting pissed off at classics too. I seem to be upping my game.How much shallowness can one person stand.Well, if I feel betrayed, imagine Jay.Newsflash sweetheart, when a man wants to give you the world, the least you can do is send a flower to his funeral.I suppose he would have had you not destroyed him.I've never respected a fictional character more.And the best part is that now, we don't even have the excuse of a battle between the old wealth and the new rich of the 1920s. This modernity has procured us with a fresh new brand of hollowness. So that we can all hide behind empty shells of betrayals and prejudice.Mr. Fitzgerald, it seems that the dream of the green light was never more far away than it is at this moment.
—Marina
