The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald
This review was written on 8 Jun 2020.
About a month ago I came across the 2013 film based on this novel (with the same name) in a collection given by a friend. It was a lazy summer afternoon, so I gave it a watch. It left me pretty agitated, for I came away disliking the characters and wondering why The Great Gatsby had been so acclaimed. I talked to a (different) friend about my skepticism, and he asked me to read the novel. I agreed, and a few days ago I got around to opening this book, mind filled with apprehension.
For the uninitiated, here is my attempt at a succinct spoiler-free summary. The Great Gatsby is a novel narrated by Nick Carraway, who makes the town of West Egg his new home. His house neighbors a massive estate owned by the titular character, Jay Gatsby, a millionaire shrouded in fantastic tales about his enigmatic past who hosts extravagant parties at his estate every weekend. Nick has a second-cousin named Daisy, who lives in the town of East Egg, right across the bay, with her husband, Tom Buchanan (another millionaire), whom Nick knew in college. On his first visit to their mansion, Nick meets Jordan Baker, a champion golfer and a childhood friend of Daisy. She confides to Nick that Tom has a mistress in New York who soon appears in the form of Myrtle Wilson, a woman who is the epitome of vitality. She is married to George Wilson, a mechanic who is described by Tom as “so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive”. The main storyline follows Gatsby’s pursuit of Daisy, whom he loved in his youth. We first meet Gatsby when he invites Nick over to one of his parties and proceeds to ingratiate himself with Nick by taking him out to lunch. He then uses Nick to set up a meeting with Daisy, and the two are reunited after five years. Following this, Daisy visits Gatsby often at his estate, which no longer plays host to those huge parties. What follows is probably better left a suspense.
As I read on, my aversion towards the characters kept increasing. (view spoiler). Towards the end, I felt, like Nick, that I’d had “enough of all of them”, including Nick. Also, the novel describes America of the 1920s (the so-called Roaring Twenties), a world with materialism at its zenith and great disparity in the distribution of wealth and luxuries, and I didn’t like it one bit. Fitzgerald described it as “a whole race going hedonistic”.
Despite all this I admit, that like Daisy’s voice, The Great Gatsby excited and enthralled me. The characters, though flawed, are memorable and I think Fitzgerald intended it to be this way. They were developed nicely, employing many expressive words seldom seen nowadays. I went into the book having seen the movie, so for me, the experience was a very unique one, as I knew what was going to happen and the suspense was in how it was going to happen. The plot was unreal but again, I didn’t dislike it as I initially had after watching the movie, and I feel once again that Fitzgerald intended it to be this way. I had little empathy for Gatsby throughout the novel, but in the end, I did feel sorry for him.
The writing style was quite poetic, with heavy vocabulary and lots of romanticism. The first couple of chapters were fine, but I feared I would be turned off by the artistic descriptions of Gatsby’s house and its parties, for the movie went out of its way to showcase them, but it was manageable. At the same time, I would be untrue to myself if I didn’t mention the hundreds of sentences I had to reread, and I could make neither head nor tail of many of them even after multiple iterations. These are the kinds of sentences analyzed and interpreted by people to no end, but they aren’t for me. After a point, when the pace of the story rose, I couldn’t afford to pause to take in the essence of those erudite lines. I admit, with regret, that I skimmed over them.
Just a few words about the movie. It needs to be appreciated for its accuracy in portraying the scenes and the story. The acting was top-notch and the setting was vibrant. The first party Nick goes to is where we’re introduced to Gatsby and the movie depicts this differently. I don’t mind in the least for we get that iconic shot of Leonardo DiCaprio raising his wine glass.
To conclude, I found The Great Gatsby to be a good read, but it didn’t completely dissolve my initial confusion, and I am certainly not sure if I would recommend this readily to folks, for it is a strange tale set in a brash world with despicable characters. But you know what, I think Fitzgerald intended it to be that way.