Customer Reviews

The Great Gatsby (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a master piece in literature and should be read not only by student but everyone who enjoy a good written book. It is richly set in the jazz era and portraits the life and shallowness of Gatsby the main character. An impossible love and the empty life he lives in pursue of this undeserving girl. A great work of art.

Anna del C.
Author of "The Elf and the Princess"
and "Trouble in the Elf City"
The Elf and The Princess: The Silent Warrior Trilogy - Book One (The Silent Warrior Trilogy)

F. Scott Fitzgerald's timeless classic is evocative, stirring and unsettling. I had not read this book in thirty years and decided to re-read it while looking for another book at the library. I can now understand why leading experts believe this is one of the best if not the best American novel in the last one hundred years. It has it all: lost love, class struggle, deceit, betrayal and murder. Fitzgerald's descriptive prose is exquisite. His imagery shines every step of the way. I highly recommend reading this great American novel!

It is almost embarrassing to admit, but I've reached the age of 48 and had never read The Great Gatsby. Chalk it up to being a product of the south Arkansas public education system. In any event, having returned from a week long golf trip on Long Island, it seemed like a perfect time to polish off the very short novel, and VERY short it is.

Coming in at about 170 pages, this novella is very much a period piece, set in 1920s Long Island, the characters being by and large, the idle rich. The story revolves around the narrator's observations as they relate to his next door neighbor, the mysterious and dashing Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's cryptic relationship with the narrator's fabulously wealthy married cousin, Daisy.

While I would say that the underlying story is average at best (after all, the idle rich are pretty much idle), Fitzgerald's use of imagery is among the best I've seen. The length of the novel ends up being almost perfect, as the story would likely grow stale were it much longer.

Set in the Roarin' Twenties, this unforgetable classic is a romance as well as the story of Jay Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald told the story in a unique way, through the voice of Nick Carraway, an impartial aquaintace of both Gatsby and Daisy.

Details of the golden era come alive in vivid descriptions of fashion, music, and decor, carrying the reader back to a time of bootleg liquor and the newly invented automobile. Jay Gatsby lives in a luxurious mansion. He sometimes stands on the beach in his backyard gazing across the water at a green light marking the home Daisy Buchanan, the love of his life who is, unfortuately, married to someone else. Daisy's two-timing husband Tom is not impressed with Mr. Gatsby.

As the tale unfolds, we see that Jay Gatsby is quite a different man than the most people think. Beautifully written, I highly recommend this classic romance.

I know I had to read the Great Gatsby when I was in high school. I dont remember enjoying the book, in fact I couldnt even tell you exactly what it was about till now. This time around I really loved it. The Great Gatsby is a story told by Nick, about his neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Gatsby appears to be a rich, sucessful man, but there are rumors lurking around town about him. He throws lavish parties and seems to have lots of friends. Why did he come to this town? Where did his money come from? Are these people really his friends? I really enjoyed this book because F. Scott Fitsgerald's characters may not be the best people, but I loved them anyway and felt that much more sorry for them by the end.

"The Great Gatsby" is a sad book. But perhaps the saddest thing of all is that F Scott Fitzgerald's tragic, moving portrayal of the American Dream demonstrates that the typical American's pre-occupation with the yearning for wealth, class and an easier life can ultimately be so empty, so meaningless and so utterly unfulfilling.

When Nick Carraway left what he saw as a comfortable but mundane existence in the Midwest, he moved East to a magnetic New York City to learn the bond business. Renting a "weather beaten cardboard bungalow" in a town called West Egg on Long Island, he met a distant cousin, Daisy Buchanan; her husband, Tom, struggling to live up to the brilliance of a university football career in New Haven; and his next door neighbour, Jay Gatsby, an enigmatic man whose wealth had originated from mysterious means. The many rumours hinted at everything from Prohibition rum-running to murder.

The actual plot of the story, told through the eyes of narrator Nick Carraway, is so utterly pointless and virtually directionless as to leave the reader wondering how such simplistic, almost mindless melodrama manages to be so compelling and so captivating.

Nick tells the story of his move to New York City. We learn that Jay Gatsby had fallen in love with Daisy Buchanan several years earlier, at a time when he was an impoverished nobody and couldn't hope to marry someone like her. After Gatsby leaves to go to war, her subsequent marriage to Tom Buchanan is ultimately unsuccessful as Tom has an affair with Myrtle Wilson, the wife of a local mechanic. Jay Gatsy, now wealthy almost beyond imagining as a result of his involvement in criminal activities - the details of which are never fully disclosed in the story - asks Nick to re-connect him with his former love as he seeks to have Daisy admit that she had never stopped loving him since their first affair many years earlier. Gatsby desperately wants Daisy to confess she had never actually loved her husband at all.

The reader witnesses a non-stop whirl of debauchery as the shadowy Gatsby hosts an endless string of decadent, liquor-soaked bacchanales at his Long Island mansion. The readers are left to question Gatsby's motives as he is portrayed as an observer who never truly participates in his own parties. Indeed, the majority of his guests are clearly pretenders to his acquaintance and wannabe seekers of the trappings of wealth who have never even met their host and wouldn't know him to speak to him on the street.

The climax of the story arrives after a tragi-comic confrontational gathering of virtually the entire cast of Fitzgerald's tale - Tom and Daisy, Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway and his erstwhile lover, tennis player Jordan Baker - sitting in a steamy, overheated, hotel room sipping on iced mint juleps casually discussing whether or not Daisy's future rests with Tom or with Gatsby.

The brim of the cup that is "The Great Gatsby" runneth over with licentiousness, hypocrisy, greed, amorality, false friendship and weak-kneed love - in other words, a veritable cocktail of moral turpitude to sip or swill and digest while pondering its base flavours plus a variety of notes and subtle overtones.

In hindsight, it is also worth considering the irony that, as a bond trader on Wall Street in 1925, Carraway would have had but a scant four years remaining before encountering the Wall Street Crash and the utter collapse of his fantastical New York world. Perhaps F Scott Fitzgerald was prescient as well as a brilliant writer who would have us take away the message that it might be worth a moment to reconsider the true meaning and value of every American's fondest "American Dream"!

Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss

When I was "forced" to read this book in high school, I didn't enjoy it much. I thought it was all one big soap opera, and I found the characters rather shallow and unappealing.

Boy was I wrong! I recently re-read this book again, and I loved it. The characters are so incredibly appealing. Their emotions and interactions are vivid, intense, real and captivating. I fail to understand why, when I was younger, I wasn't swept off my feet by Fitzgerald's wonderful language, which captures his characters with such clarity and lyrical grace. This book is alive. It's such a joy to read a living book.

When I was younger, I didn't "get" this book, but now I do. I think, in part, when I was younger, I couldn't relate to the characters. I suspect I found their emotions rather soap-opera-esq and bland because I didn't adequately understand them. The closest emotions I had seen or understood appeared in soap operas and lousy, lovey-dovey movies.

But, in fact, Fitzgerald's characters are so much more fascinating and real than that. His language - the details of his descriptions - make that clear. Now, I can absolutely relate to Nick, Gatsby et al. While I haven't had their experiences, I can empathize or, at least, sympathize.

A wonderful book.

I reread this recently and loved it so much more than when I had to read it in high school. Fitzgerald's humor is so much more subtle than most humor writer's today and the funny lines are tucked between such beautifully crafted prose. The story is so simple - basically just describes a few parties at a mysterious Gatsby's mansion - but the humor and just enough foreshadowing keep you wanting to move forward. His observations of the young rich would fit in almost perfectly today. Inspired me to get back to writing my own book!

By Jaimal Yogis, author of Saltwater Buddha

Whenever I think of HS, I think of my favorite book, The Great Gatsby. Even though I was only 16, there was something about this book that left a lasting impression.