| Title | The Great Gatsby |
| Author | F. Scott Fitzgerald |
| Copyright | 1925 |
| Type | Fiction |
| Length | 114 Pages |
| Finished Reading | April 13, 2024 |
| Notable | Modern Library 100 Best Novels Library of Congress: 88 Books that Shaped America |
| Ratings | Personal: 3 stars Amazon: 4.4 stars (1,936 ratings) Goodreads: 3.9 (5,308908 ratings) |
The Great Gatsby is the definitive novel of the Jazz Age. It’s an important book; reading it almost 100 years later renders any kind of amateur review seem inconsequential. If you have ever thought of reading the novel, stop reading this review and go read the novel.
Nick, the narrator, moves from the midwest to New York City to make his way in the business world. He rents a place on Long Island because his cousin Daisy lives there with her husband Tom. Gatsby is Nick’s fabulously rich neighbor who throws enormous, elaborate parties hoping to entice Daisy, whom he knew a few years prior. Nick introduces Daisy and Gatsby. The two start a fling but are stopped by Tom (who is having is own affair with Myrtle). Gatsby is crushed when Daisy decides to stay with Tom. Driving back to Long Island, Gatsby lets the inexperienced Daisy drive the car. Along the way Myrtle mistakes the car Daisy and Gatsby are driving for her lover Tom and rushes into the road to stop them but is run over and killed. Gatsby takes the blame and is murdered the next day by Myrtle’s husband.
Many people who attended high school in the 60s and 70s were assigned this book. Somehow I skated through high school without reading it and didn’t even encounter it in college where I majored in English Literature. I corrected that oversight this year. Going into the novel I wondered why it was assigned reading in high school. It turns out to be a great novel for a high school English class: It is short, has well defined characters, an unhappy ending, and very clear symbolism which can help young-ish readers understand what literature is capable of.
Classes could easily spend an entire period comparing and contrasting Nick, Gatsby, and Tom. Students are introduced to novels where people don’t necessarily live happily ever after. Perhaps the biggest symbol is the enormous land filled with railroad steam engine ash on the road between the city and Long Island.
…This is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air
Page 23
…
But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doc T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doc T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic – their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose.
The ashen landscape is a barrier between New York City and the bucolic Long Island. Tom’s mistress lives with her husband in that valley: a dark, gray land with eyes that see what is going on. Chew on that sophomores. With sensibilities as they are, I don’t imagine this novel is taught in schools anymore.
I do think there is an enormous plot hole in the novel; though it may be that reading it almost a century later I don’t have an adequate understanding of the time. After stopping the Gatsby/Daisy dalliance in the city, Tom is fine with Gatsby and Daisy driving back to Long Island by themselves. Maybe he thought it was a way of further humiliating Gatsby. I don’t know anyone in today’s world allowing that to happen. Discuss.
Finally, this novel is an interesting counterpoint to the Jeeves and Wooster novels I love. Those novels also take place in the Jazz Age, although in England, and cover the life of the wealthy. But the Wodehouse novels are all for fun. Gatsby turns that world on its head.
While I’ve given this only 3 stars pay attention to the Goodreads number: just shy of 4 stars with over 5 million ratings! This is an important work that describes, if not defines, a century-old slice of Amercia.
