Rating: 
Summary: More disappointing than I remember
Review: I had read this years ago, probably for HS required reading. It was on A&E a few weeks ago and I was only able to watch the first half (this is the Robert Redford version, not the remake). Well, instead of renting it I bought the book hoping to have it for my collection. I reread it and the whole story just seemed a lot less gripping than I remembered it. I'd resell the book but I got iced tea on some of the pages. Oh well.
Rating: 
Summary: Great is an understatement
Review: Reading the negative reviews of this book depresses me. What is it about high school education that makes kids hate books? How can we stop this? "In my younger and more vulnerable years..."It's especially sad because The Great Gatsby is a wonderfully written tragedy. Gatsby and his doomed love for Daisy is cast against the deco backdrop of roaring 20's New York, which is vividly rendered by Fitzgerald. It is a period piece, and there are things that are definitely of that time, but there is much about it that is timeless. I want to encourage anyone who read this in high school and was made to hate it to pick it up. It's a very brief read, and is worth your time. Maybe the passage of a few years helps clear the high school myopia about great books like these. And if you were lucky enough not to read this in high school, pick it up now!
Rating:
Summary: THE great American novel
Review: I am a 17 year old high school student and I just read the Great Gatsby this year for my English class. I expected it to be just like every other "classic" novel, full of stogy prose and dated language. Instead what I found was a thorougly "modern" book, in every way. The descriptions, the characters, the situations, all seemed to be latent in society today. It made me want to be alive in the 1920's, a time of unmeasurable prosperity and creative talent.
Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking...
Review: "The Great Gatsby" is one of those works both blessed and cursed: blessed to have gained literary immortality, cursed to spend much of that immortality as assigned high school reading. Let's face it: most of us dislike WHATEVER we had to read in high school, regardless of what it was. When I was a senior, I hated this book. But, perhaps in an attempt to prove to myself that I really have grown and matured since that time, I recently took up my old copy of the book and started over again. I must say that not only was I satisfied with the work, but I was BLOWN AWAY! "The Great Gatsby" in my opinion is well worth all the praise which has been thrown onto it over the years. If you hated it in high school, give it another shot. Maybe its just one of those books you have to grow into? I'll suspend calling any book the "Great American Novel" at least until I've read "Moby Dick," but "The Great Gatsby" is certainly a strong contender!
Rating:
Summary: The Greatest Novel Ever?
Review: There's so much critique-wise that could be said of this book. It's an entertaining, interesting story. The characters are so well-developed and their actions and words so consistent and unique throughout the novel that they seem so real. This is something most novels lack. Fitzgerald brings even the minor characters to life. The imagery and symbols are intricate, both serving to further the theme. The symbols are an integral part of the story, like Gatsby's car, which characterizes him as ostentatious and symbolically leads to his death. The characters themselves are symbolic. The story serves as a historical document of the 20's. The thematic material applies as much to our present society as it did back then. It is condensed, fitting so much meaning into each page, each sentence, each phrase. Much of the wording of the book is so memorable, so quotable, even magical. The Preface, Publisher's Afterward, and the Explanatory notes of this edition, as well as Cliff's Notes are very helpful to understand and appreciate this novel. The basic theme is that of the American Dream. Jay Gatsby is defined by his dream to win Daisy Buchanan, a popular, beautiful, but superficial girl. To win her, he needs exorbitant sums of money which he gains through corruption. Gatsby has all the "toys"-- a mansion, a Rolls-Royce, a hydroplane, and connections to people like Meyer Wolfsheif who fixed the 1919 World Series. Dan Cody circling the continent aimlessly in his yacht as he falls victim to alcohol shows that money is not an end in itself. Gatsby is different because money is only a means to an end for him; still, he fails. This book shows the harmful effects of a wide gap between the rich and the poor. The wealthy Buchanan's are not productive at all and the poor Wilson struggles to survive and is pushed around by Tom Buchanan. This book shows that such extreme wealth as Gatsby's and the Buchanan's leads to waste. Gatsby has a pool he only uses once all summer. He drives a Rolls-Royce which can cost over 300 grand in today's money. Daisy drives the car and accidentally kills Wilson's wife who was having an affair with Tom Buchanan, Daisy's husband. Tom manipulates Wilson into thinking Gatsby killed her and Wilson shoots him then turns the gun on himself. The major theme of the novel is that "money isn't real" as the movie "Blow" put it. The material world is illusion, in other words. I've heard it said that "You can't buy happiness but you can rent it." If that's true, then it helps explain Gatsby's failure-- he tried to, and thought he did, buy it. Gatsby's boyhood program for self-improvement as revealed by his dad at the ending is just like Ben Franklin's autobiography. Two self-help books I've read and reviewed negatively are "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie and "Awaken the Giant Within" by Anthony Robbins. After reading Gatsby it seemed as though these two books were studied and practiced thoroughly by Jay Gatsby. First off, Gatsby's mannerisms resemble what is recommended in "Win Friends." Gatsby is very indirect. He can't just go directly to Daisy or even directly to Nick to arrange the meeting between he and Daisy. He has Jordan tell Nick about the background between them then has Nick invite Daisy over to his house (he's Gatsby's neighbor) and tells him to tell her not to bring her husband. Gatsby then disappears outside when she comes and knocks on the back door. He must have looked like an idiot to Daisy being so ridiculously indirect and obvious like this. Gatsby even bought his house in the neighborhood of Daisy for this reason. Another aspect of Win Friends is to smile-- whether you are truthfully happy or not to charm other people into liking you. Consider Nick's description of Gatsby's smile, "It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it. It faced--or seemed to face-- the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you, with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished--and I was looking at an elegant young roughneck...whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd." As is advised to do in "Win Friends", Gatsby makes other people feel special like the way he calls everyone "old sport." But keep in mind Gatsby has no real friends and everyone but Nick merely uses him. They flocked to his mansion by the hundred for his parties but only a few people were at his funeral. The other Jay Gatsby handbook is "Awaken the Giant Within" by Anthony Robbins. I once saw Tony on TV and Jay Gatsby came to my mind before I realized it was him. I saw Tony's signature before and it was signed in a "majestic hand" just like Gatsby's writing on the note of invitation to his party to Nick. Throughout his book, Robbins writes of his accomplishments of making money and buying all the ostentatious "toys" like Gatsby has. Both men's obsession with materialism is so intense as to almost take on a spiritual level. Comparing "The Great Gatsby" to these two books and the movies "Blow" and "Casino" are just some ways you can understand how Gatsby relates to our world now even though it was written about the 1920's. I don't feel a review of a 1000 word limit can possibly do justice to this novel. To appreciate it yourself, all the more I can say is read it, read Cliff's notes, think about it, read it again, and observe how the theme relates to the world around you very much today.
Rating:
Summary: Good, But Overrated
Review: This book was extremely well-written and held my interest...until the END! The ending was pretty much terrible and basically ruined the whole book. I was left unfulfilled, unsatisfied. The book seems as if it is a bit overrated. It's good, but not THAT good. A wonderful book has a good beginning, a good middle, and a good ending. This book lacked a good ending, therefore it cannot be a wonderful classic.
Rating:
Summary: The Quintessential American Dreamer
Review: I've just reread THE GREAT GATSBY for the first time since high school. It's amazing we had to read it in high school. How could a teenager understand all this stuff about adultery and materialism? I remember my eleventh grade teacher said that F. Scott Fitzgerald, "wasn't a first rate writer, but he was a very good second rate writer." Even in eleventh grade, I found that horrific. Why labor at all to write a book in the first place, pouring all your life blood into writing what would become a 20th century classic, just to have some high school English teacher dub you "a very good second rate writer"? In my English teacher's defense, we were a very trying class. She was trying to get us to elucidate the symbolic meaning in the scene where Jay Gatsby stands on his dock and stares at the green light across the water. She said, "The dock scene . . . what comes to your mind?" The jocks who sat in the back of the class yelled, "Hickory Dickory Dock." The poor woman literally banged her head into the brick wall of our classroom. Rereading THE GREAT GATSBY all these years later, I am struck with how fresh and utterly relevant it is. In essence, it isn't dated at all. What happened in West Egg in the Long Island Sound in 1923 could just as well have happened in Silicon Valley in the Dot Com Nineties. There are many Jay Gatsbys. Fitzgerald created an essential American archetype with Jay Gatz, the boy from North Dakota who wanted to reinvent himself and turn himself into something grand, based on the dreams he had for his life when he was 17. We catch a poignant glimpse of him as a thirty-year-old man who woos and impresses his long lost love with his swank mansion and his English tailored shirts. All glitter and glamour, the most important thing is that gaudy surface and facade that dazzles the eye. It says a lot about our culture, about the quintessential American dream.
Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking. Unbelievable. THE American novel.
Review: I consider this book to be the greatest American novel EVER. Don't take my word for it, however, read it for yourself. Even if you end up not liking it, I think everyone should at least read this book. I also think many people don't see the depth that there really is in this book. It's not just about love, or romance. It is the persuit of a dream, a dream that is not all that it seems. A dream that is represented through one character, Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is an illusion. Read it.
Rating:
Summary: Readable Classic
Review: Extremely enjoyable and intrically written novel. Gatsby a self made, yet pretentious, man tries to regain the love he lost. The problem is that he is in love with Daisy, a married woman and extremely shallow. His story is narrated by Nick Carrraway, the only truly virtuous charcter in the novel. Unfortunatley,Gatsby is no match for the old rich and is done-in by Daisy's husband Tom, a brutish oaf who exploits Daisy's shallowness to his own advantage. Gatsby's new wealth is no match for the power of old wealth and the hanger-ons that loved Gatsby's parties could care less about his demise. Fitzgerald's development of characters and plot is truly masterful.
Rating:
Summary: "The Supreme American Novel"
Review: Scott Fitzgerald was a "wounded soul." His books reveal a pathos to the universe and, perhaps, a deeper meaning the rest of us have not gotten to. In "Gatsby" you have a depiction of the failed American Dream. Gatsby himself is mysterious and clings to nostalgia: Nick: "You can't repeat the past."
Gatsby: "Of course you can!" Jay Gatsby was formerly James Gatz. But in the spirt of "existence precedes essence" he transformed himself into a powerful bootlegger. On the surface, this is a love story. On another level, this is a satire on the cliche of "money buys happiness." The idea of making money is future-oriented. Yet Tom, for example, is rich but says: "I turn garages into stables." In other words, the rich people in this book have hit a cul de sac, a dead end. Even Daisy, Tom's wife, says: "What do people plan?" She has gotten so complacent that she has forgotten existence. She has no striving, no motivation, only dull conversation and sitting around. People often compare Fitgerald and Hemmingway. But it seems to me that Fitgerald was the one who was the more poignant. He had a real sadness that most authors do not have.
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