Rating: 
Summary: A Litlle Less Than Great
Review: The Great Gatsby is one of the top classic novels of all time. It is fairly familiar to most people and instantly recognizable when its title is said. F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby, was very detailed in his writings and used a lot of imagery and emotion in this novel. It takes place in the early 1920's in the heart of New York. Near Long Island, Nick Carraway (the main character) rents a house here and lives for the summer of 1922. In his time of living here, he has heard about the wealthiest, most popular, and most luxurious man in all of Long Island, Jay Gatsby. This man is known for his lavish parties, extreme amount of money, and a bad past. Come to find out, these two are connected in some way from their past, and will be reunited through different meetings. Jay turns out to be Nick's next-door neighbor, and through a series of events, both bond strongly.This all sounds like a good plot, and a good read for anyone, including high school students (like myself) on up. This however is not necessarily the case. Although I am in an AP English class that is more of a college level class, I found this book to be hard at times to get through. There is too much that goes on that strays away from the main plot and main point of the story. I just simply found this book to be boring. It is not a book that young adults should read. It is very drawn out, long, and detailed. It uses very sophisticated language and is written with very much detail. The only reason I found this book difficult to read was possibly because I had to keep myself from nodding off. Respectfully, yes it is a classic and should be read, but maybe for college students or adults instead of teenagers.
Rating: 
Summary: shouldnt be read in high school.
Review: I apologize for many of the close-minded high school students who decided to vent the fact that they hate everything they read in school on this website. I am sorry to say that I am a high school student, who had the pleasure to read this book last year. It is truely amazing how one book can get a kid my age so engulfed in the concept of reading. Everything about this book is wonderful to me. The symbolism throughout the whole book just adds to the tragic story of Jay Gatsby and his inability to let go of a past life that has haunted him for years. In short, this book deconstructs the basic American dream and reveals it as a desperate attempt to cling to memories of a love that is, and always had been out of Gatsby's league. The superficiality of his new social status is made extremely lucid by symbolism as simple of Gatsby's pool. The pool had never been used by gatsby himself, it just sat in it's place to be used for nothing other than show, much like Gatbsy himself. The money he acquired(through illegal ventures) had never been about himself, but only about the hope that somehow he could prove to Daisy that he had become an upscale man. The hope that somehow the past would could be not forgotten, but re-lived ultimately led to Gatbsy's destruction, as he failed to realize his own desperate and hopeless quest for wealth soon enough to save his soul. The way Gatsby is depicted paints two portraits of one man, a man who has everything; a fabulous mansion, money, cars and all of the other worldly possessions one can hope for, and the other; a man who has everything but what he desires most, the love he would give everything up for. In the end, Daisy and friends are revealed as nothing more than snobbish drunks, and Gatsby remains the shattered man who always strived to do better for the ones he cared about, the ones he loved. How any person who reads this book and does not appreciate it for the wonderful story it tells is beyond me. Kids these days seem to automatically hate any book they are forced to read in a school environment, and it is a shame. Perhaps if high schoolers could look past their own superficialities and accept a book for what it is, than many would be better off.
Rating:
Summary: The hollowness of the American Dream ...
Review: This slim novel of simple prose by F. Scott Fitzgerald is considered by many to be the greatest American story, the tale of what an empty life one can lead if one adheres too strongly to the American Dream. Jay Gatsby has risen to prominence in a method right out of a Horatio Alger novel. Born a Westerner of no consequence, Gatsby has acquired his millions and moved to Long Island for the single goal of marrying Daisy Buchanan, a woman he romanced for a month in his youth. However, Gatsby's single-mindedness is his downfall. Every action, every acquaintance, every acquisition over a five-year span has only helped him to romanticize his quest. Gatsby fails to question whether he wants to belong to Daisy's world, and he cannot comprehend that Daisy's daily concerns about her wealth may temper her love for him. Through the eyes of Nick Carraway, another misplaced Westerner, but one with his feet firmly planted in the less-manicured lawns of reality, Fitzgerald weaves a tapestry of the excesses of New York in the Jazz Age. It is a world of people bonded together by "their money or their vast carelessness" who "let other people clean up the mess they had made." Gatsby could not find fulfillment in his elaborate hoax because he is too honest to enjoy the illusion he created.
Rating:
Summary: Exquisite Little Classic
Review: Yes, The Great Gatsby is a true classic. It is such a beautiful little novel, and its themes transcend the century. Most people know the story. Nick, who narrates, has just moved to New York, and his life becomes entangled with that of his mysterious neighbor, the rich, self-made Jay Gatsby. Jay Gatsby is in love with Daisy Buchanan, Nick's cousin, who is married to Tom Buchanan. The plot follows the telling events that take place between this small group of the Jazz Age elite. The entire novel is so exquisitely constructed. The prose is beautiful, the plot is an emotionally moving degenerative tragedy, and the symbols are intricately woven in to deftly illustrate the theme. And that theme is so relevant as Fitzgerald laments over the fall of the American Dream. He reveals the wasteland that is, the America made hollow by the embrace of materialism and a set of false ideals to adhere to their materialistic longings. There is so much that Fitzgerald says, and reading the work, one feels that the Jazz Age has yet to end. We are still reeling in the languish Fitzgerald described.
Rating:
Summary: The great Great Gatsby
Review: I suppose we could go on forever telling you how great this story is. I'll simply say that you must read it. It is one of the greatest pieces of literature in history.
Rating:
Summary: I hated this book!
Review: and I stayed up crying for hours after the ending! Even now if I see a copy of it in a store I cringe. I won't tell you why because that would ruin the story for you. So why am I giving it five stars? Because the writing is *truly* remarkable. If you want an example of excellent literature, this is it.
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Summary: THE GREAT GATSBY: A Dream Gone Sour
Review: During the hedonistic go-go years following the end of the First World War, F. Scott Fitzgerald was plainly alarmed by the cultural and financial excesses that marked America's new and what was for him, a perverted interest in the historically rooted American dream. In this dream, begun by Ben Franklin in his autobiography, he lists, as does Jay Gatsby in THE GREAT GATSBY, a shopping list of virtues whose goal it is to inculcate those values that both Franklin and Gatsby thought would lead to material success. The difference between Ben Franklin and Jay Gatsby has more to say about the use of those virtues than their origin. With Gatsby, the American Dream is not simply pulling himself up by his bootstraps from poverty to riches, but in his warped vision of that dream, Gatsby symbolizes what can go wrong when any upwardly mobile American allows another to recast that dream according to the competing dreams of another. Gatsby believes that he loves the incredibly alluring Daisy Fay, a teenage society deb--beautiful, sexy, elegant--whom he sees as the ultimate goal for his life. They meet, they fall in love (or do they? This is arguable) and they break up because Gatsby is too poor for her to marry. Up to the point that they meet, Gatsby is pursuing the Franklinian version of the American ideal, which can be summed up as hard work + true grit = material success. Gatsby wants success, but he wants it for himself. After meeting and being rejected by Daisy, Gatsby now sees his dream as the means to achieve a higher dream: securing the affections of a woman whose limitations in taste and fidelity were obvious to all but him. During the years of their separation, Gatsby worked hard to build his criminal empire that brought him the money and possessions that he truly saw as the missing variable in the romantic equation that would convince Daisy to be by his side. Gatsby is wrong is so many ways that the reader is not sure whether to laugh at him for his emotional myopia or to pity him for the same reason. Those critics who analyze Gatsby's role in the perversion of the American dream tend to focus on the Gatsby side of the equation, yet to understand the inner tragedy of this dream's deconstruction, one must also examine Daisy's role. Exactly who is this Daisy Fay? To begin with, consider her last name, which is an aberrant spelling of 'fey,' which means a doomed vision. Those who connect with her, both Gatsby and her brute husband Tom, are doomed to a life of trying to relate to a woman who cannot return basic human kindness. Daisy is shallow, frivolous, and easily impressed by the very qualities that Tom showers her with (a $350,000 ring) and Gatsby shows her (those silk shirts that cause her to weep). It is almost as if Daisy is auctioning herself off to the highest bidder. Daisy's dream is the flipside of Franklin's. She wants the rewards of hard work without incurring the demands of the work itself. In the collision between these contrasting dreams, it comes as no surprise that buried somewhere in Daisy's soul is just enough of a link to harsh reality to remind her that Tom, despite his affairs and animalistic nature, is still preferable to a Gatsby, who offers only the illusion, not the reality of love. When Nick tells Gatsby that the past cannot be reborn and reshaped into a present more to his liking, Gatsby stuns both Nick and the reader by saying, "Of course it can." Gatsby's entire life and by extension his dream of success that is to include the questionable charms of Daisy, is seen as so flawed that whenever his dream meets a competing dream that has at least some root in reality, his dream of a green light that can blink into any color he wants will crash into a tragedy that resounds even today.
Rating: 
Summary: This is Tasty
Review: This book is a fine example of books that will be entertaining to those who like to read and those that are inapropriate for School purposes. this is a more pature book and i believe that it was writen with great passion and this is shown in Mr. Gatsby himself. with all the tragety in this book and the love story that is displayed, i would recommend this to anyone who wants to read a classic but not to anyone looking for just any old book and doesn't give it the respect it deserves. Blindspot is the best band in the WORLD.
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Summary: Ms. H
Review: This book was a pretty good one which kept my interest and did not put me to sleep. More action could have been used but the romance was nice and the ending was Clutch. The willingness of Jay Gatsby to Stick with Daisy was exciting and i liked the passion that was put into writing it. Well done Mr. Fitzgerald.
Rating: 
Summary: The 1920's Are Over
Review: They say a book can never get old, and with age they become classics. The Great Gatsby is a prime counterexample of this. In my opinion, a book that is entertaining and exciting needs to stretch the mind. It needs to use great imagination. Imagination makes mystery and murder novels scary and thrilling. Imagination makes a sci-fi interesting. What is there to imagine about The Great Gatsby? There are murders, but not very unique ones. If I wanted to read a good murder mystery, I would go to Thomas Harris. As for the love story The Great Gastby is placed around, I see this as the only conflict in the book. Every event in the entire book was based on this unrealistic relationship between Daisy, Tom, and Jay. To conclude, I would expect this story in a 1920's newspaper rather than being a mass produced as a "classic" novel. The only use I have for this book is a sleeping-pill substitute.
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