The Great Gatsby

Rating:
Summary: Simply captivating!
Review: The Great Gatsby is simply one of the staples of literature for the 20 Th century. Fitzgerald conjures up a wonderful tale about the relationship between the eccentric Jay Gatsby and Nick. One can not call oneself a cultured person if one has not read The Great Gatsby.

Rating:
Summary: The Great Gatsby
Review: I did not enjoy The Great Gatsby while reading it but after finishing it. I sat down and thought about what i had just read. I enjoyed it, it is about chasing dream that are not realistic. There are lover stories and love affairs throughout this book that makes the plot interesting.The characters are describe in unusal details.It also describes what life was like in the 1920's. After understanding this book I would recomend it to everyone.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful masterpiece
Review: I was so absorbed in the beautiful tone that I almost forgot about the story. I read the beginning over and over again, and still could not grasp all the mystery and beauty of the world that Fitzgerald was revealing. A true masterpiece. Worth reading 1000 times. That's all I have to say about this book.

Rating:
Summary: The Slightly-Great Gatsby
Review: I was forced to read _The Great Gatsby_ for my English class and I did not like it very much until the end. To me at least, the beginning is somewhat dull and dry. The narrator, Nick Carraway, seems bland and emotionless until the end. Some portions of the text seem trite, however, to the book's credit, the ending seems to rescue it from my giving it 1 star. I won't spoil the ending, but it will make you think about the world in which we live in, that is, the nature of humans. The ending seemed to produce two opinions of Gatsby, noble and ignoble. Read the book to find out why!

Rating:
Summary: Trying to impress a girl
Review: Jay Gatsby is deeply in love with a woman named Daisy. In an attempt to win Daisy over, Gatsby moves across the harbor from her and her husband Tom. By moving across the harbor, Gatsby hopes to lure Daisy to come to one of his huge parties held during the prohibition. The narrator of the story, Nick, Daisy's cousin, moves next door to Gatsby. When Gatsby finds out that they are cousins, he gets Nick to invite Daisy and Tom to one of his huge parties. When they finally meet, Gatsby and Daisy rekindle an old romance.

Conflict is a main literary element that is used in this story. Gatsby is battling with society because he smuggles alcohol to earn money to impress Daisy. He thinks that if he has money that she will come back to him. He is using illegal means to try and get money to impress her. Even though this was during the prohibition, Gatsby still manages to get alcohol.

Rating:
Summary: Leaves you wanting more.
Review: This is a good book but not a great book. After deciding to go back and read some of the classics I fell upon "The Great Gatsby". The problem I have with this book is it leaves to much up in the air and you want to know more. You get a feeling for the 20's but not much since this is such a short novel and very little is written describing the 1920's parties and events. The people seem interesting at first but you never learn anything of value about them and why they are in their current condition. After reading 1984 and Slaughter House 5 I was enthralled by their charters and their situation but that just didn't happen here. Maybe Fitzgerald is showing how shallow the 20's era and people are bye making everything so empty and non-descriptive but that doesn't make for great reading by my standard.

Rating:
Summary: The Compelling Carraway
Review: It is interesting that Fitzgerald's choice title for "The Great Gatsby" was actually "Under the Red, White, and Blue" (after he rejected the much-publicized "Trimalchio"). However, the book had already gone to press and it was too late to change the title at that point. The reason I mention this is that I believe Nick Carraway is actually the most interesting and compelling character in the novel, contrary to popular belief. Fitzgerald set a standard for narration with this novel - a larger-than-life character seen from the less-biased view of a narrator who is eventually drawn into the novel's plot (as seen in "All the King's Men" and "Sophie's Choice",and even the film "Wall Street" among others). By the end of the novel, the reader comes away with a compelling and solid portrait of the Midwesterner, Nick Carraway (note, carraway seeds are in rye bread, a Midwestern association), who goes East, finds it "morally bankrupt", and eventually returns to his roots. The novel is about the American Dream in general, and it is incredibly ironic to call Gatsby "great", as he is shown to be a slave to love and ambition, whereas Nick is a much stronger man in the end. Nick is the only one who changes throughout the course of the novel, and therefore while he is not as outwardly flashy as Gatsby, he is the one who keeps the reader's interest in the end, as he comes to the same conclusions that we hope we would come to in a similar situation.

Rating:
Summary: Death of the American Dream
Review: This despairing novel set in New York in the 1920s addresses the hopelessness of the American Dream. The novel is centered around Jay Gatsby, a man who dreams of bringing back the past with the woman he loves. That woman, Daisy, is concerned only with the material world and represents themes of the decaying moral standards of the 1920s. By the end of the novel, Fitzgerald has made apparent the unattainableness of the past as well as the falsity of the American Dream.

Rating:
Summary: The Impossible Dream
Review: Perhaps the strongest point made by this book is Gastby's futile attempt to reach the idealistic goals that he has set based on the romanticism of the 20's. In his work Fitzgerald has created a picture that summarizes an entire decade. The character Daisy also represents the pressures put on women during that time period. This book is excellent for anyone fascinated with the 20's as it transports you to Gatsby's time and for all of you hopeless romantics out there.

Rating:
Summary: Class Project
Review: There were too many characters; it was hard to understand. Gatsby was an interresting fellow. Gatsby's parties sounded fun. It tells you about all the cool things that happened in the jazz age. "I dont care what the rest of the class says I liked it"