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The Great Gatsby

 
 
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is regarded as one of the "great American novels" and one of the best pieces of literature to embody the 1920s, post-war society, and aristocratic hypocrisy. 

Summary
29 year old, Nick Carraway is a WWI veteran moving from a midwestern childhood to an east-coast adulthood. He moves to Long Island's up-and-coming neighborhood for the young and rich. His bungalow is smashed between West Egg, the new money neighborhood on the Sound, mansions. One of his neighbors is the glamorous Jay Gatsby who has loved Nick's married cousin, Daisy Buchanan, for five years. Daisy is married to Nick's Yale classmate, Tom Buchanan, who is a physically large man with a macho personality that entertains a love affair with Myrtle Wilson in New York. The Buchanans marriage is not necessarily a happy one, but neither East Egg resident will spring for divorce. 

Carraway starts attending Jay's frequent parties and befriends Gatsby. Throughout the novel, Gatsby tries to bring out his co-dependent affection of Daisy. Nick is always along for Gatsby's lavish, gaudy rides, and along the way, learns not only of Gatsby's twisted past that Jay frequently lies about but also that Gatsby may never win Daisy. 

Review
The Great Gatsby is my new favorite book. Fitzgerald has done it. He's knocked Austen's Pride and Prejudice out of the top spot. (Robert Penn Warren may knock both of these out with All the King's Men, but we shall see...) 

This book is described so deeply by a judgy (Nick says he is ANYTHING but judgy on page one, yet he judges everyone?) narrator that getting to know characters is just like getting know someone out of the literary realm. Personality traits and elements of a character's past are not introduced all at once and in order but much more realistically. Facts are presented with no regard to timeline. Personality traits are figured with how characters handle emotional situations. 

The details and color imagery used in this novel makes it the read of a lifetime. This love story is a tragic one. Not idyllic in any way, The Great Gatsby presents real, emotional, class issues through fantastical parties and aristocratic lives that are hidden and hushed in order to conceal personal issues and feelings. There is a reason it is regarded as not only one of but also THE great American novel.




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