LAuREL gatsby

Laurel Woerheide

American Literature

Katy Hudak

5/15/14

Book Review: The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a deeply compelling novel in which Fitzgerald writes about the so called pleasures, parties,  people and their hardships during the 1920’s. He simply writes about a hot day in a way that almost makes you sweat. His characters are well-drawn, and the plot is engaging and fast-paced.  Fitzgerald makes it very clear from the beginning that Gatsby is above everyone else in terms of importance to the novel, and that he would be the protagonist and our focus as we went through the story.  He does this by making Gatsby extremely mysterious and seeming to have everything he wants, which we later find out is not the case, as his one desire in the world was to have Daisy, an upper class woman whose only love in life is wealth and a social influence.  The book highlights class issues well, showing the reader the odd ways they come about and lag behind, and the way opinions are formed of the rich and poor.

This book contains a very important lesson that is useful for anyone, but could be particularly influential to someone coming of age; the lesson having to do with the false importance put into money, power, and social importance.  It is essential for children to have it in the back of their minds that these things are not what is truly important or telling of one’s life, but more so that you eventually have to come to terms with who you are, what you have, and how wholesome of a person you intend to be.  The author doesn’t come out and explain that these things are what should be practiced rather than greed and selfishness, but instead we are left to infer that the author did not intend for us to take away a positive outlook on such shallow and unmeaningful lifestyles.

 Fitzgerald is creative in that he makes us care about the story, but we never at any point cared for the characters.  Gatsby, Tom, Daisy, Jordan, and even Nick are not necessarily people we like, but are people we don’t respect, and in that light we understand part of the author’s message.  These shallow characteristics, however, are showing of human nature.

1. The reason this book is so compelling to this day is because humans have not changed their

1. mindset in that they always want more and better. For me, this may be the ultimate tragedy of the book.  It shows us that we can be so alone and empty, and can never find what we really want out of life and therefore push it away even when we were heading straight for it.