The Great Gatsby

This post first published August 18, 2012.

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
First Published: 1925
Publisher: Arcturus
144 pages (paperback)
 
Finally got around to reading The Great Gatsby. I don’t know why I didn’t earlier — it’s very short,  fairly interesting and can easily up my list of classic books I read this year, haha. To my understanding, many American kids have to read it for school at one point, but I never went to school in America so this is my very first time reading it. I enjoyed it, and look forward to the movie coming out in late 2012 too  ;)

The Great Gatsby involves the narrator, a man named Nick Carraway, who moves next door to a giant mansion owned by Jay Gatsby. Gatsby holds parties at his house all the time, very large and lavish parties where most of the guests are people who wandered in rather than invited. One day, Nick is invited by Gatsby to come to his party so he does. Nick and Gatsby eventually become friends. Later, Nick finds out Gatsby bought the mansion and throws these huge parties because he wants to attract the attention of Nick’s cousin, Daisy, who lives across the water from the both of them. Gatsby met Daisy a long time ago, but because he had to go do his war service, he left her behind and when he came back, she was already married to someone else. At last, Gatsby and Daisy reunite, but the reunion does not go as anyone planned.

Sometimes people feel daunted having to read a classic book because they might find it difficult to read or understanding, but The Great Gatsby is actually a very simple read. The prose is lovely without being complicated. It’s a book that describes a particular time period in American history, the jazz age, and I actually read this book listen to some quiet jazz music in the background — it really puts you in the mood, and helped me immerse myself into the time period more easily.

This is not a particularly character driven book, and is more about events, so following that sort of plot may be easier as well. I like plot-orientated books much more than character driven ones, but a part of me did wish the characters were flesh out a bit more. Our narrator came off as horribly flat and passive, though I can forgive him easily since I think his only role in the book was to be the voice. Gatsby started off as a mysterious wealthy man but as I read on, it was apparent that he was a desperate, hopelessly-in-love kind of guy, to the point it’s a little pathetic. Daisy was kind of a twit who didn’t seem to really know what she wanted. Tom was racist and sexist by today’s standards so I didn’t really like him, although yes, he’s most likely just a product of his time. About the only character I liked at all was Jordan Baker, I think. Still, all these characters combined together did the job of describing what it was like to live in the Jazz Age, I think, and what kind of dreams and hopes people had — just a bit of a shame that most of them I didn’t find all that likeable.

I think the best way to describe how much I liked this book was that the entire time I was “mildly interested”. Not terribly addicted but not so bored that I wanted to put it down either. Just interested enough to keep reading it. All in all, it’s a good book (and if you’re a kid in high school being assigned this to read, don’t fret, it’s really not a bad book at all!)

My Rating: 3/5