Rating: 
Summary: Read It Again For The First Time
Review: I haven't read Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' in almost two years. I picked it up again, to-day, though, and realized the truth of the notion that one learns something new each time one returns to a book. 'The Great Gatsby' just is a novel that must be returned to periodically to appreciate it properly.While the characters in the novel remain ultimately unknowable at their indefinite cores, Fitzgerald does a great job tying his characters to their historical setting. The protagonist of the novel, to my mind, is Nick Carraway, the narrator. The hero of his story, which frames the novel, is the legendary Jay Gatsby - a legend in his own mind. Although Carraway's narration is often heavily biased and unreliable, what emerges are the stories of a set of aimless individuals, thrown together in the summer of 1922. Daisy Buchanan is the pin that holds the novel together - by various means, she ties Nick to Jordan Baker, Tom Buchanan to Jay Gatsby, and Gatsby to the Wilsons. The novel itself deals with the shallow hypocrisies of fashionable New York society life in the early 1920's. It is almost as though Fitzgerald took the plot of Edith Wharton's 'The Age of Innocence' and updated it - in the process making the characters infinitely more detestable and depriving it of all hope. Extramarital affairs rage on with only the thinnest of veils to disguise them, the nouveau-riche rise on the back of scandal and corruption, and interpersonal relationships rarely signify anything permanent that doesn't reek of conspiracy. The novel's casual allusions to beginnings and histories often cause us to reflect on the novel's historical moment - when the American Dream and Benjamin Franklin's vision of the self-made man seem to coalesce in Jay Gatsby, a Franklinian who read too much Nietzsche. No matter how you read it, 'The Great Gatsby' is worth re-reading. M.J. Bruccoli's short, but informative preface, and C. Scribner III's afterword are included in this edition, and both set excellent contexts, literary, personal, and historical, for this classic of American literature.
Rating: 
Summary: "The Great Gatsby" really was...great!
Review: "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a complicated tale comprised of many themes which are all linked together in a very clever fashion. Nick Carraway is the title character, who is from Minnesota. The setting is the 1920s, and Nick has just moved East, to Long Island. His neighbor is man by the name Jay Gatsby, but as he later finds out, that name is false. Although Nick lives in the West Egg, his friends live in the higher-class East Egg. Daisy, his cousin, lives with her husband there. Nick discovers that Tom, Daisy's husband, is cheating on her, with a woman across town, Myrtle. Both Myrtle's husband and Daisy know nothing of the affair. Nick meets Jordan Baker via Tom and Daisy, and they have an intimate relationship. As the story progresses, more information is revealed about Gatsby, and how he knew Daisy from a long time ago. In fact the sole reason that he moved to New York was to be near Daisy. Gatsby's complex emotions are that of a man who obsesses with power and wealth. His vision is to achieve power and wealth, which he has done illegally, and to achieve Daisy, who symbolizes power and wealth. Tom finds out about Gatsby's affair with his wife and asserts himself; Daisy does go back with Tom. While Daisy was driving home with Gatsby, she ran down and killed Myrtle, her husband's lover. Gatsby took the rap for her, as he still loved her. Myrtle's husband got word of who made him a widower and then tracked down Gatsby and shot him. He also killed himself. Nick tried to hold a funeral for Gatsby, but hardly anyone attended. Thus, he realized that New York was no place for him and moved back to Minnesota.\ The most prevalent theme present in "The Great Gatsby" is: "The grass isn't always greener on the other side." Nick moved to Long Island in hopes of getting rich. However, he couldn't see past the mask of fame and fortune to the low level of morality. In the end, he realized that he would rather live a simple, honest life than get tangled up in a web of deceit in New York. This idea is enough to make anyone think, and so did I. I have always thought it would be cool to live in an extravagant life in a big city. Being from a rural Midwest town, such as Nick and Gatsby, I often ponder the opposite lifestyle. However, like the characters in the book, I am not sure that I could sacrafice my morals an honesty just for a mansion, a BMW, and a yacht. At first thought, I would say that, "yeah," I could do without to get ahead, but after analyzing it, I bet I probably couldn't. This type of situation involving "the American Dream," really does depend on the strength of the person who is put into it. In the case of Gatsby and Nick Carraway, they could not handle it. When looking at the "The Great Gatsby" for the first time, the reader does not know that the title is actually quite ironic. Gatsby was acutally the opposite of great. He lied about his past to almost everyone he met, he changed his name, and he became a criminal just to get ahead. This is not a person who is great. Contradictorily, he was great in the eyes of the people who perceived him. Even Nick, who knew the whole story, still had a feeling of respect and liking towards Gatsby after his death. The ending was good in that it reflected the themes of the book. It was fairly complex and complicated, but it did finalize the story. I would recommend this book to more advanced readers. It contains a heavier vocabulary, and the theme are presented somewhat abstractly, but the story is great. "The Great Gatsby" is a classic book, and no one has an excuse not to read it. It really is an excellent story.
Rating: 
Summary: LA Novel
Review: I think that this novel had a good plot line. There were quite a few parts though at which I got confused.If I did not have to read this book for a novel project in my Language Arts class, I highly doubt whether or not I would have gotten past the first chapter. The first seventy pages of the book were filled with so many details and so much information that I kept getting confused. Luckily, one of my friends, the one who recommended the book to me, was always able to answer my questions and explain things to me in a manner that I could comprehend. I feel that the book does not really begin to pick up and make any sense till page eighty or so. After that point though, I feel that the plot really picked up and became more interesting. I am one who watches soap operas, so it was a little bit of a resemblence. For the most part, I do not think I would have finished this book had i not been forced too, but I am glad that I did,because it turned out to be a half decent book in the end. That is why I rated it three star.
Rating:
Summary: Give it another try!
Review: I first read this novel in high school. I found it slow, the characterizations fuzzy, and the plot uninvolving. Recently, I came across a copy that my stepdaughter had been required to read in high school. I decided to try it again. It is, of course, quite wonderful. Magical, Keatsian prose; masterful management of a complex narrative structure: wonderful impressionistic characterizations (The women are especially vivid.) If you read it in high school and were underwhelmed, I suggest that you give it another try. Incidentally, my stepdaughter didn't like it either--but I think she might in twenty years!
Rating:
Summary: Good story, but not one of the greatest of all time
Review: A good but not great book. I support Clifton Fadiman for not including it in his list of books for The Lifetime Reading Plan. I really wouldn't bother reading heavy symbolism into it, magnifying its importance with nonsense. Yeah, people are greedy and selfish, okay, so? The main characters are wealthy, mysterious Gatsby, wealthy and self centered Tom Buchanan, Tom's wealthy and self centered wife Daisy who Gatsby is in love with, and Tom's no-class adulterous girlfriend Mrs Myrtle Wilson. It is a short book, and a quick and easy one to read. It holds your interest because of the subject matter - love, betrayal. Most of the characters aren't likeable, they are dislikeable. It is one of the most overrated books of all time because it is often called one of the greatest books, which it definitely isn't. Can anyone seriously put this little story up against War and Peace, or Brothers Karamazov? Come on. You don't have any great characters here. But it is an interesting story that earns its three stars out of five.
Rating:
Summary: Its made out to be more than it is
Review: This novel started out very slow and elongated a plot that beomes tedious to read. The pace picks up toward the middle and devolops a decent ending. I felt Fitzgerald could have been more manifest in the book's overall meaning and sumed up the general meaning in fewer words. This book is not all it's hyped up to be yet a decent novel. I might have enjoyed the book a little more if it hadn't been put up on such a high pedestal. If you decide to read this novel, dont go into it with high expectations. However the author does do a good job of tying the book up together in an organized fashion.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Classic
Review: Gatsby is one of those novels that I love to come back to and reread. It's really a writers' textbook that teaches by example how to extend, invent, and use language in new and effective ways. For it's a rare book that gets this amount of meaning into a sentence and it's a rare book that has the dimensions and extraordinary intensity of impression that its paragraphs carry. Scenes blaze with life and it all goes by so fast I always end up with the feeling that I have finished a short story not a book. In Gatsby Fitzgerald is more in command and control than he is in all his other novels put together including The Last Tycoon, Tender is the Night, The Beautiful and the Damned, and This Side of Paradise. Gatsby is a novel with few false moves, a simple story and a simple plot. One might say almost perfect in structural simplicity, but the meanings are complex creating the suggestion that there is more, much more, under the surface, which incidentally there is. Part of the subtext is brought out by rich symbolism. Who will ever forget the weird eyes of T.J. Eckleburg looking over the wasteland of ash and what that means? Who will ever forget the green light at the end of Daisy's dock and what that means? If you haven't read this classic of twentieth-century literature, please read it. If you have read it, you might profit by going back after you have matured some more and rereading.
Rating:
Summary: Cynical but Accurate
Review: As a high school student who read this for english class, I was naturally reluctant to like this book. However, I found that I actually can admire the incredible writing style Fitzgerald demonstrated. While I may not enjoy the plot, it is realistic and brings across the point of the book- to show how many americans had begun to veiw the world. While the bleak ending may not be my cup of tea, it was the way the story had to conclude. A happy ending would not have been a natural ending to the story. The Great Gatsby was one of the first books of its kind. Written in the Ninteen-twenties, it was a cynical and accurate look at american society's increasing preoccupation with wealth.
Rating:
Summary: I Liked This Book Better Before I Read It
Review: And I'm sure Nick Carraway would agree with me, judging from the last two pages, when he's talking about the settlers landing on long island for the first time and how the entire continent lay open before them, full of hope...sort of like Gatsby's relationship with Daisy. So, having read "the American Book," I'm now left with a sense, like Nick suggests, of "is that all there is?" The answer, obviously, is yes. But the book is brilliant; you should read it and think about it.
Rating: 
Summary: THE NOT-SO-GREAT GATSBY
Review: Like others of you out there, I had to read this in HS. First, I made a point of reading the introduction and was shocked that this book was an ABSOLUTE FLOP back in its day. I had the hardest time understanding why it is now considered a classic. I wonder if the hype is causing people to give this book good reviews. Yeah, it talks about the Jazz Age, but other than that it is pretty dumb.
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