Rating:  Summary: The Careless 20's Review: The Great Gatsby is one of those books which on the first time you read it, it goes right over the top of your head. The plot is in total only a few pages in total, but the characters and the point and theme are what make the story. The characters, except for Gatsby and Nick, are very careless; they don't care what happens around them, or what they cause. They spend their life visiting other careless people, or lying around doing nothing, or going to parties. You do not finish this book with a sense that you have read all 170 pages... most of the story is thought, character and description. However, the window this book gives on the time of post first world war wealthy America draws you in to experience the hopeless state of the society and the tragic results of their carelessness on other people.
Rating:  Summary: 3 and a half stars actually Review: The novel is beautiful written. I have one problem is with the theme: money doesn't buy. I don't disagree with that statement, it is just king of obvious. I mean it is not exactly an epiphaney.
Rating:  Summary: dreams Review: This book is about knowing that some dreams are too far from reach, yet we still always try to attain them. Like Gatsby, we are taunted by how close we can come to that dream, but in the end, we realize that our efforts are fruitless. Each of us have our own "Daisy" -- each person did during the 20's, each person does now, each person will in the future -- The Great Gatsby is a classic. Fitzgerald does a fantastic job depicting a timeless theme that people of all time periods have experienced.
Rating:  Summary: dreams Review: This book is about knowing that some dreams are too far from reach, yet we still always try to attain them. Like Gatsby, we are taunted by how close we can come to that dream, but in the end, we realize that our efforts are fruitless. Each of us have our own "Daisy" -- each person did during the 20's, each person does now, each person will in the future -- The Great Gatsby is a classic. Fitzgerald does a fantastic job depicting a timeless theme that people of all time periods have experienced.
Rating:  Summary: 3 and a half stars actually Review: This book is really interesting and fun. To me it was so good and easy to read that I did not want to put it down. It just sucks you in. This book has been called "a great american classic" but I do not agree. Even though it's a great read and has a good plot and great characters, I would not call it one of the great classics. I especially liked how the author explained about the characters. This book may start out slow for some readers, but keep with it, it only gets better. I really enjoyed this book. I recomend it to anyone looking for a fun and easy read.
Rating:  Summary: a great read Review: This book is really interesting and fun. To me it was so good and easy to read that I did not want to put it down. It just sucks you in. This book has been called "a great american classic" but I do not agree. Even though it's a great read and has a good plot and great characters, I would not call it one of the great classics. I especially liked how the author explained about the characters. This book may start out slow for some readers, but keep with it, it only gets better. I really enjoyed this book. I recomend it to anyone looking for a fun and easy read.
Rating:  Summary: Decadence at its Finest Review: This is a tremendous indictment of the superficiality of elite society. Surprisingly, it is Gatsby himself who is both the most real and the most fake of the elite described within. Gatsby utterly invents himself to become a part of elite society, and as a result his pretensions of cultured society remain mere pretensions. However, throughout all of this pretended culture Gatsby has a singular very real purpose in mind, and in so doing becomes thoroughly real because of those pretences. By showing us Gatsby's defined purpose, F. Scott Fitzgerald shows us the reality of Gatsby far more than is ever seen of Jordan Baker or Tom and Daisy Buchanan. (Admittedly, Nick Carraway is the most real character within the novel, but he not actually part of the elite he describes.)That indictment of elite society aside, the real beauty of "The Great Gatsby" is its lesson that life cannot be relived. Gatsby devotes his life to recapturing a period of happiness from his life and recreating it exactly as it was, trying in the attempt to obliterate the years and events that have fallen between. In this attempt he comes very very close - close enough to be forgiven his belief that it was possible - but in the end his dream is impossible. Had he been willing - or able - to accept the changes that the intervening years necessitated then this more realistic dream might possibly have been achieved, but by insisting on a return to events as-they-were Gatsby dooms himself to an inevitable failure of his dream. It is said that you can't go home again; "The Great Gatsby" is an almost perfect metaphor for that maxim. Ultimately, this is a beautiful and tragic novel. It is eminently readable, and its status as an American classic is well-deserved.
Rating:  Summary: The Great Gatsby Review: This was a very interesting book. It had a lot of things going on at the same time. The book describes how people act when they are greedy and have a lot of money. Like when Jay Gatsby wanted Daisy he thought he needed to buy a big house and have lots of money to win her over. It can be confusing at times, but he does a good job on describing each of the caracters.
Rating:  Summary: Two stars for a pitifully overrated novel. Review: V.S. Naipaul once disdained F. Scott Fitzgerald for being a terrible writer prone to injecting his novels with "bogus emotion." He was right on the mark. "The Great Gatsby" is a pedestrian, pretentious book that has somehow made its way into the Great Novel section of American literature. This is by no means a great novel; it isn't even a particularly good one. The story is thin and forced. Annoying, self-consciously clever characters (reflections of their creator) preen and weep through 185 pages of would-be Greek tragedy. The narrator, Nick Carraway, is annoying, as is virtually every other character in the book. In fact, there isn't a single person in this entire novel who is worth caring about. The prose is laughable and usually downright bad. Sometimes it was so incoherent and overwrought that it seemed to be poorly translated from another language. Fitzgerald's attempts to be "poetic" invariably fall flat. "The Great Gatsby" is little more than a relic of a past era, and not a very compelling relic either. Obviously, other readers will have to come to their own conclusions, but for me, "The Great Gatsby" should have been retitled "The Mediocre Novel."
|