The Great Gatsby

Customer Reviews

• Decades later, still great but on different terms.  Aug 25, 2001 (65 of 71 found this helpful)

  Having reread this book for the first time in 20 years, I can confirm that there's a reason that it's considered one of the very best American novels. However, my reaction to the story was different than when I first read it in high school. I recall that back then I was hoping that Daisy and Gatsby's love story would ultimately yield a happy ending. Now, I found them both to be such shallow creatures that they inspired no pity. While I considered the characters to be emotionally stunted, that dooesn't mean I was not impressed with Fitzergerald's skillful rendering. As in most forms of art, in literature it is more difficult to accurately and interestingly portray nothingness than to describe a richly endowed subject. At this more cynical age, I found Daisy to be a remarkable emotional void, and Gatsby's quest to pour all of his hopes and dreams into such a shallow cauldron only confirmed his own vapidity. One thing that hasn't changed in all these years is my amazement at Fitzgerald's ability to set a scene. His descriptive passages are truly poetic, and his command of word choice in unparalleled. All this made for a stimulating and delightful read.

• like a fine wine, it gets even better with age  Oct 3, 2000 (85 of 102 found this helpful)

  I'm troubled that many young people in these reviews don't seem to appreciate this novel. Even when "forced" to read it in high school, I loved it. I've read it for probably the tenth time recently and I can say that every single time it's better than I remembered it. I was prompted by the character is Haruki Murakami's book Norwegian Wood who carries it with him and reads it to cheer him up. This narrator calls it the most perfect book ever written and says that you cannot find a page that's not perfect. I have to agree -- it's not just the plot, it's the beautiful writing and incredible characters and scenes that stay with you years later. Even after years, who can forget the scene when Gatsby shows Nick all his custom made shirts, or Nick describes his first vision of Daisy by comparing her posture to someone balancing something on his/her chin, or any of Gatsby's parties, or the broken nose -- you get the idea. For some reason, rereading this book reminds me of picking up a relationshp with an old friend. It's so very comforting to read the best prose you can find in English and find that certain passages are almost committed to memory. Don't miss out on this one. If you didn't like it in high school, try it again when your reading tastes mature.

• A book that lived up to all of my expectations  Dec 4, 2000 (25 of 29 found this helpful)

  I have always looked forward to reading the classic book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. When I finally had time to read it, I wasn't disappointed. The Great Gatsby, written in 1925, is a fictional tale that takes place during the American Jazz Age. The story is set in the eastern U.S. and follows the journey of a young man named Nick. The book trails Nick from his home in the West to his new life in West Egg, New York. Nick becomes involved in the social scene is West Egg, which is mainly centered on the weekly extravagant parties thrown by the incredibly wealthy and strangely mysterious Jay Gatsby. As the book progresses, Gatsby's past is slowly unraveled. Nick witnesses Gatsby's gradual admittance of his significant secret. He discovers that Gatsby is deeply in love with Daisy Buchanan, a beautiful socialite, trapped in a miserable marriage to an unfaithful husband. Though Nick does not want to be involved in any way with the illicit love affair between Daisy and Gatsby, he is gradually takes a larger part in Gatsby and Daisy's dangerous romance. When Jay and Daisy decide to declare their love to one another, it leaves Gatsby in an unforgettable and risky situation that changes the lives of all involved. The Great Gatsby was one of the most interesting books that I have ever read. It included a beautiful love story, danger, suspense, tales of true devotion and friendship, and a wonderful, thought-provoking commentary on the society in post-World War I America, a time of excess and confusion. I have learned several lessons from the novel, whether they are about loyalty or remaining true to oneself. I would recommend this book to anyone above the age of thirteen because of some parts of the novel that might be difficult to grasp. The Great Gatsby is a truly wonderful book, and sure to be enjoyed by many for many years to come.

• A Journey back in Time.  Mar 21, 2001 (24 of 28 found this helpful)

  The first time I encountered "The Great Gatsby" it was as an assignment in a high school English class. My recent re-read occurred after my son had read it in his high school English class. The reread brought back memories of a form of academic study from which I have been separated for many years.

  "The Great Gatsby" is an excellent book in which to study the writer's art. In this short book the reader can detect a collection of symbolic details which make the story much more than the tale which appears on the surface: the ash heap, as a symbol of the waste of American society; the green light on Daisy's dock, which means so much to Gatsby as a symbol, until he again meets Daisy, when it again becomes, for Gatsby, as for everyone else, just a light.

  The characters all play their roles in the development of the story. Shallow figures fill Gatsby's parties, but show their true level of concern for him when they all absent themselves from his funeral. The class distinctions between Daisy, a true upper class maiden, who can never lower herself to accept Gatsby, the aspirant to a class rank which wealth and parties cannot buy. Gatsby's source of wealth is hinted at by his association with Meyer Wolfsheim, the gambler who fixed the World Series. Like others, he will associate with Gatsby in life, but has no time for him in death.

  The unnatural core of Gatsby's world is illustrated by his act of moving east, rather than the traditional westward migration, in order to achieve freedom and advancement.

  Tom and Daisy Buchanan represent old money, which will not accept Gatsby and, in the end, destroys him.

  Nick Carraway is the one character in the book who develops his own moral sense. His role as narrator permits us to see Gatsby's world through his eyes. It is he who sees, and is repelled by, the rotten cores of Gatsby and the worlds in which lives and into which he aspires. He sees the corruption deep inside Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Most of all, we see the innate goodness in Tom. Observing, but not entering Gatsby's world, he is able to understand and judge it. His final evaluation of Gatsby's world is seen when he abandons it all to return to his native Midwest.

  As I re-read "The Great Gatsby" I remembered what I had not liked about it the first time I read it. The causal acceptance of infidelity seems at odds with what I have always viewed as the ideal as well as the reality. As one studies the commentaries of this book, with all of its symbolisms, I often wonder if the symbols were really in F. Scott Fitzgerald's mind as he wrote the book, or whether they are constructs of later commentators. Either way, they give the book a depth which so many others lack. When my son speaks of other books he reads in English class, he always says "It's no Great Gatsby." The more I think of it, few of novels are.

• The scales of the butterfly  Nov 27, 1999 (10 of 10 found this helpful)

  Ernest Hemingway, who had a lifelong love-hate relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald once described Scott's talent as "perfect and delicate as the wings of a butterfly." Yes, and that is what the lucky readers get in The Great Gatsby:that wonderful, exhilerating, lyrical delicacy shadowed by tragedy. I keep re-reading this book. It contains four or five of my favorite scenes in all literature: the scene of Daisy on the couch in the cottage with the breeze billowing her dress; the car accident at the party when we glimpse this dancing shoe emerging from the car; the great passage about "those thrilling, returning trains of my youth" and the scene where they're getting drunk in the hotel. There has never been a better, more subtly written drunk scene. Many have called Gatsby the best American novel of the century. It's not hard to see why. It's got everything in it. And it still stands, fresher than ever, as the great sad story of the American Dream gone sour.