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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Great Gatsby is basically a literary cocktail party teeming with overgrown, overprivileged, and ultimately disenfranchised boys and girls who are uncertain of how to define themselves in a climate in which social and economic expectations and roles are constantly evolving. I think what I like the most about this story is how each and every character (minus, perhaps, the narrator) is absolutely abhorrent on some level. F. Scott Fitzgerald's characters are truly fascinating: they're glamorous yet uncultured, hardened yet vulnerable, seemingly simple yet deceivingly complex, spoiled and pampered yet discontent. In short, they're wonderfully, repulsively American, straight to the core. You'll love, hate, and most likely recognize at least a few aspects of yourself within them.



Short of a few choice excerpts, I didn't find this story particularly extraordinary in terms of content. The themes of social disenfranchisement and the delicacy of the American Dream are kind of old news after growing up with early 90s MTV (bahaha)--though I'm sure that during its time, The Great Gatsby probably felt fresh and unspoiled. To me, the true redeeming quality of this story was in the nuance of Fitzgerald's descriptions of mundane scenes and settings. Chiggity check:



"The lawn started at the beachand ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens--finally when it reached the house, drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run."



"He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening fora moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struckc upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower, and the incarnation was complete."



"So engrossed was she that she had no consciousness of being observed, and one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture."



"There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went, like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars."



The book is certainly worth a read for its lyricism at the very least.


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