The Great Gatsby

Rating:
Summary: Great in two aspects
Review: The Great Gatsby is great in two aspects of books that I look for. First is the general story; plot, characterization, setting, storyline. Second is the way it is written which keeps you reading it over and over.

The setting is a fictitious New York suburb of East and West Egg in the early 1920's, a location dotted with large estates build with immense wealth. The main characters are the narrator, Nick Caraway; his new found girl and golf pro, Jordan Baker; Tom Buchanan, the husband of Daisy Buchanan; and of course James Gatz also known as Jay Gatsby, self prescribed culturist of old wealth.

Concerning the first aspect, this book is an art of obsession, treachery, deception, hubris, crime and murder. It is the original soap opera (though not annoyingly melodramatic). It will keep you turning pages and ends with a bang.

The second aspect, the one that makes it a classic is the brilliant prose and mastery of the English language. Like a movie that presents something new every time you watch it, this book has many subtle subplots and philosophical outlooks.

I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in reading and rereading the classics. A book from "the lost generation," written by an author from World War I, it definitely has the era's deserving undertones.

Rating:
Summary: Worthy of It's Classic Reputation...
Review: Yes, I've read this many times,since high school, where it seemed like a force fed waste of time.I never knew the types described in this book then.Like "Bond Business" Nick,a business based on trading money (update to Tom Wolfe'S BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES,which has many similarities to THE GREAT GATSBY!) But, that was a long time ago. Usually I breezed thru it,but recently I gave it a more serious try, and found it to be just as great as they say! Why? Simply, because the characters are incredibly true to life. I've met Tom Buchanan types so many times it makes me want to (I won't say here.) The world is full of arrogant smart alecks who never had to do a thing on their own,and who look down their nose at their supposed "inferiors". And Daisy...How many shallow,money grubbing,self obsessed young ladies are there like this? One wonders what Gatsby saw in her too,but that's probably the point. You know, the ones who get thrilled by looking at dozens of colored shorts in a wardrobe, as she does with Gatsby. Both types really care for nothing except themselves and their little toys. FS Fitzgerald probably knew hundreds like this...Now the Gatsby character is more unique and refreshing,even if he is dull.The self made guy who may have made his money under shady conditions. Then again,how about the dot-com millionaire rage of recent memory, and the way the world and the media were lapping it up. Now, the Enron fiasco where it's obvious the bigshots could care less about anything other than lining their own pockets at everyone else's expense.A little like Tom perhaps. But Gatsby seemed to have a heart, shallow as he may have been. And the New York 1920's locale rings true too...This novel easily can be read by a 15 year old,even though his life experience will not be able to understand it. And an 80 year old can appreciate it too. If Joyce's ULYSSES was the best novel of the century, how many can figure it out?. Really, almost no one! Same with most others on the list,like say Faulkner.ULYSSES was not about what FSF called "the bitch goddess success" which is what THE GREAT GATSBY is about...As far as another reviewer here questioning what the final line meant..ie "So we beat on,boats against the current,borne back ceaselessly into the past"...Surely it was THE GREAT GATSBY'S obsession with the past,even as the future beats away, and Daisy's disappearance from the past into the present, that was responsible for his terrible demise at the end!! Tell your Professor that's the obvious answer to his 20 year question..We should each learn to deal with our own past darknesses. The tragedy of a person like Gatsby is that it becomes an obsession resulting in a sad ending...Also, this is without question a monument to the language, the second reason it is such a classic.

Rating:
Summary: So we beat on...
Review: "So we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past".

Surely one of the most apt and, to the reviewer who claimed no one can understand it, clearest conclusions to a novel. The Great Gatsby is a novel about the pursuit of a romantic ideal. Gatsby/America pursues its ideals in vain. For all our optimism, for all the pure belief in the ideal/the green light/the orgiastic future, it recedes before us, year by year. It is unattainable, it does not exist, it is but the projection of our past desires (for Gatsby, read the Daisy of his past, for America, read the untarnished new world). Still, no matter, we will keep trying, we will row on, boats against the current, our goal folornly already behind us... we are born back ceaselessly into the past.

As for the anti semiticism/racisim - Tom is a racist, but is clearly an unthinking ignorant racist - did Fitzgerald really need to expressly condemn him? The condemnation is implicit.

Perhaps the professor referred to in the first review had his own political agenda. If so, i suggest he read Roth's the Human Stain.

Rating:
Summary: Gatsby rules
Review: One of the best book I have ever read. A must read for everyone.

Rating:
Summary: My Opinion of the Great Gatsby
Review: This novel takes place in the 1920's and is based on some of the things that happened in the earlier part of F. Scott Fitzgerald's life. I felt that The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was an amazing novel for many reasons. Some people felt that around the first fifteen pages or so were not needed, but I thought that the pages helped me a lot with understanding the setting. It was incredible how well written this novel was. Every page just keeps pulling you in deeper and gets you more interested. As I got into the book, I had to think twice about whether it was a true story or not. If you read this book straight through like any other book, you will think it was well written and had a good story line. However, this book is much more complicated then it seems. There is symbolism throughout the whole book that you should lookout for. Once you identify it, you will have a whole new understanding of what this book is really about. I loved the way that this novel was such an easy book to read because one idea just flowed to the next. Most books that are considered classics are relatively difficult to read, but this really wasn't. It was really amazing how you could relate what happened in this book to what happens in everyday life today even though it is a completely different time period. For people who like reading good literature, this is a must read.

Rating:
Summary: What's all the fuss about?
Review: I always can find something good about a book, no matter how bad it is. The Great Gatsby, however, is probably one of the only books I've read that I hate.

It is the story of a man who, basically, talks about nothing. The plot is nonexistent, just the ramblings of a man who's confused about society. The characters are either boring or not developed enough. The worst part about the book is that you get the feeling that F. Scott Fitzgerald is going to hit you with a great, dramatic, thought-provoking ending, and nothing happens at the end. When I finished, I was left with the feeling of "Okay, what was that all about?" I can understand that it is a reflection of the 1920s, but certainly not a very good reflection.

This is a book you should read when there is absolutely nothing else to read. If there is anything else at all, read that instead.

Rating:
Summary: you cannot deny it
Review: Here's one of the most read American novels. Sure, it's been heaped with praise since the critics of the mid-1920s were thinking about worshipping a new messiah. But let's face it: their enthusiasm was on the right mark.

The Great Gatsby is a swift, gorgeously written story about people we don't seem to have anything in common with. These are confused, wandering, sub-stratispheric members of an even more deeply ingrained sub-culture that, for the modern reader, also has no bearing on anyone they will ever encounter. And yet the prose and the narrative force of this novel imbues these alien characitures with the sweet and stunning glow of life. They transform into very human beings caught up in much of the youthful pain and torment of anyone who ever dreamed of success. It is a tragic, heart-rending story of broken-hearts and insincere love as well as an epic portrait of nearly an entire generation of people embodied in the character of their greatest ambitions. This book soars higher and higher with the passage of time and continues to force students, sometimes, to realize that they can enjoy reading a novel.

A wonderful, extraordinary book that tends to stay with you for a long time.

Rating:
Summary: The Great Novel
Review: by far, the best novel i have read in my 20 years of existence. i ask every girl i'm interested in if she's read it. a response of yes=we'll keep in touch and no=no love

Rating:
Summary: Find your own green light beyond the foul dust
Review: The Roaring Twenties, also known as the Jazz Age, was a very American response to World War I. Until 1917, America had kept her distance from the commotion on the European continent, and it was indeed the Great War that pushed America out of her hesitant isolation and onto the world scene. The tremendous moral confusion and psychological disillusionment thus unleashed by America's involvement in the gruesome war of attrition hailed a new generation of artists. F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the most prominent writers to have emerged from this generation of artists, framed his generation's struggle in The Great Gatsby. By placing his protagonist in the midst of Long Island, NY's dazzling elite and glamorous parties, Fitzgerald presents to us a son of the Jazz Age whose post-WWI pursuit of the "short-winded elations of men" is so characteristic of that era. But Gatsby, a decorated hero from the indecisive battlefields of WWI and also a fabulously rich man, is not a character whom Fitzgerald intends for the readers to admire. Instead, Fitzgerald hints that there is a considerable distance between the man that Gatsby is and the man he is capable of being. Thus it appears only ironic that Fitzgerald should choose to title his novel The GREAT Gatsby. But in the wake of America's political readjustment on the world scene and internal social shift, Gatsby comes to symbolize an age of great aspirations that ended in hollow grandeur. And as a protagonist who successfully embodies "an unbroken series of successful gestures", Gatsby captures Fitzgerald's own great vision of a complacent American society, numbed by shallow pleasures, and ultimately betrayed by the very dream of greatness his generation hoped to achieve.

Intrigued yet? Read the novel and find that green light beyond the foul dust of all that's tangible. Welcome to the world of Jay Gatsby.

Rating:
Summary: High up on that lonely pedestal
Review: F. Scott Fitzgerald, in trying to describe his own life and analyze it, created a work of fiction that has a unique power. It may depress you yet somehow you're glad that your two favorite characters escape the depravity and superficiality that this story takes place in. Makes you think anyone can overcome that type of trap.

Gatsby was always lonely. He was a dreamer, and an idealist in a time of cynicsm and materialism, and where who you were depended solely on what you had. Fun was fleeting and sporadic, and satisfaction the same. Gatsby was looking for a life of strange innocence he had dreamed of and somehow he was the only one who, though in his own way corrupt, could have achieved it, only to be thwarted by friends, foes, and himself.

The plot of this book and it's style are captivating. It's short, but exciting, and Fitzgerald truly works a wonder in making such a page-turner out of a bleak story. It's great.

This book as short as it is, paints a picture of the shallowness of humanity, or how shallow we can be. Reading this book I constantly thought of people I know who mirror the characters in the book. It makes you think about the meaning of a real friend, of how important wealth and image really is, and the most enduring reflection of that in the book takes place in the last scene where Gatsby is physically present.

It's a sad book, a depressing book if you let it, but it also has that very welcome and strange ray of hope.