The Great Gatsby (Book Review)

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Title: The Great Gatsby
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Publication Date: 1925
Publisher: Charles Scribner’s Son (1925); renewed in 1953 by Francis Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan
Production copyright: 2013 by Audible, Inc.
Narrated by: Jake Gyllenhaal

The Plot

via wiki:

In spring 1922, Nick Carraway—a Yale alumnus from the Midwest and a World War I veteran—journeys to New York City to obtain employment as a bond salesman. He rents a bungalow in the Long Island village of West Egg, next to a luxurious estate inhabited by Jay Gatsby, an enigmatic multi-millionaire who hosts dazzling soirées yet does not partake in them.

One evening, Nick dines with a distant cousin, Daisy Buchanan, in the old money town of East Egg. Daisy is married to Tom Buchanan, formerly a Yale football star whom Nick knew during his college days. The couple has recently relocated from Chicago to a mansion directly across the bay from Gatsby’s estate. There, Nick encounters Jordan Baker, an insolent flapper and golf champion who is a childhood friend of Daisy’s. Jordan confides to Nick that Tom keeps a mistress, Myrtle Wilson, who brazenly telephones him at his home and who lives in the “valley of ashes“, a sprawling refuse dump. That evening, Nick sees Gatsby standing alone on his lawn, staring at a green light across the bay.

Days later, Nick reluctantly accompanies a drunken and agitated Tom to New York City by train. En route, they stop at a garage inhabited by mechanic George Wilson and his wife Myrtle. Myrtle joins them, and the trio proceed to a small New York apartment that Tom has rented for trysts with her. Guests arrive and a party ensues, which ends with Tom slapping Myrtle and breaking her nose after she mentions Daisy.

One morning, Nick receives a formal invitation to a party at Gatsby’s mansion. Once there, Nick is embarrassed that he recognizes no one and begins drinking heavily until he encounters Jordan. While chatting with her, he is approached by a man who introduces himself as Jay Gatsby and insists that both he and Nick served in the 3rd Infantry Division during the war. Gatsby attempts to ingratiate himself with Nick and when Nick leaves the party, he notices Gatsby watching him.

In late July, Nick and Gatsby have lunch at a speakeasy. Gatsby tries impressing Nick with tales of his war heroism and his Oxford days. Afterward, Nick meets Jordan again at the Plaza Hotel. Jordan reveals that Gatsby and Daisy met around 1917 when Gatsby was an officer in the American Expeditionary Forces. They fell in love, but when Gatsby was deployed overseas, Daisy reluctantly married Tom. Gatsby hopes that his newfound wealth and dazzling parties will make Daisy reconsider. Gatsby uses Nick to stage a reunion with Daisy, and the two embark upon an affair.

In September, Tom discovers the affair when Daisy carelessly addresses Gatsby with unabashed intimacy in front of him. Later, at a Plaza Hotel suite, Gatsby and Tom argue about the affair. Gatsby insists Daisy declare that she never loved Tom. Daisy claims she loves Tom and Gatsby, upsetting both. Tom reveals Gatsby is a swindler whose money comes from bootlegging alcohol. Upon hearing this, Daisy chooses to stay with Tom. Tom scornfully tells Gatsby to drive her home, knowing that Daisy will never leave him.

While returning to East Egg, Gatsby and Daisy drive by Wilson’s garage and their car strikes Myrtle, killing her instantly. Later Gatsby reveals to Nick that Daisy was driving the car, but that he intends to take the blame for the accident to protect her. Nick urges Gatsby to flee to avoid prosecution, but he refuses. After Tom tells George that Gatsby owns the car that struck Myrtle, a distraught George assumes the owner of the vehicle must be Myrtle’s lover. George fatally shoots Gatsby in his mansion’s swimming pool, then kills himself.

Several days after Gatsby’s murder, his father Henry Gatz arrives for the sparsely attended funeral. After Gatsby’s death, Nick comes to hate New York and decides that Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and he were all Midwesterners unsuited to Eastern life. Nick encounters Tom and initially refuses to shake his hand. Tom admits he was the one who told George that Gatsby owned the vehicle that killed Myrtle. Before returning to the Midwest, Nick returns to Gatsby’s mansion and stares across the bay at the green light emanating from the end of Daisy’s dock.

MY REVIEW:

This is a truly great book. It is unbelievably well crafted with almost no words wasted or poorly chosen. Thematically it feels as relevant today as when it was written. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed Jake Gyllenhaal’s narration.

THEMES:

• Superficially, this is a book about star-crossed lovers and the extraordinary steps taken by Gatsby to uncross said stars. This effort is tragic, however, both in the sense that he ultimately fails and also in the sense that we learn Daisy was probably not worth his efforts.
  
  We leave the novel wondering what a man like Gatsby might have accomplished had his boundless energy and ingenuity been directed at something better.
  
• Beneath the surface, this is a book about the corrosive influence of wealth on the American people and “the American Dream.”
  
  The novel’s setting is Long Island in the Roaring 1920s. However, the book is a reflection of the state of things “in the East” in particular. The wealth and opulence of the characters in the novel are in contrast with the social and moral failures of nearly every character we meet. Fitzgerald provides us with a sense of emptiness about all of this wealth. Gatsby is a financial success but does not care for any of what he has achieved. Daisy is a financial success through her marriage but she is unhappy with Tom. Tom is born into wealth but he is restless, cruel, and openly unfaithful to his wife. Even Gatsby – who we are largely led to care for – builds his wealth via bootlegging and organized crime.
  
  The one character who seems unaffected by the described corruption is Nick Caraway. He owes his immunity to good advice from his father and his experiences during World War 1 that grounded him in reality. As a result, he is able to understand the shallowness of his lavish surroundings while so many others fail.
  
• One interesting element of the novel’s examination of wealth is the contrast between the portrayals of old money and new money. Gatsby represents new money. He lives in an ornate mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls Royce, obtained his money through crime, and he flaunts his money in a hope to impress others, particularly Daisy. His new money partygoers are portrayed as insincere, gossips, and they ultimately betray Gatsby’s generous parties with an unwillingness to even attend his funeral.
  
  Old money, as typified by Daisy and Tom, does not flaunt itself as brazenly. In fact, old money looks down on the West Eggers as tasteless and tacky. We read through the description of Daisy’s home and her white flowing dress that the old guard indeed possesses better taste, however, we also see that the old money in this novel is almost completely lacking in compassion. Daisy and Tom are indifferent to the lives lost in the wake of their behavior. Fitzgerald describes them as careless. Rather than dealing with the aftermath of Myrtle and Gatsby’s death, Tom and Daisy simply move away. Gatsby, who obtained his wealth through crime, can at least say for himself that he possesses a sincere heart. However misguided his love for Daisy might be, it is genuine.
  
  In the end, Gatsby dies because he wants to protect Daisy and he sacrificially takes the blame for Myrtle’s death.
  
• The American Dream is a focus of the novel. Generally, within our country’s culture, the shared American belief in upward financial mobility is viewed favorably. However, Fitzgerald paints the characters in the novel as taking the pursuit of wealth too far. In the process of pursuing and obtaining more, they lose themselves. Daisy loves Gatsby but decides not to wait for his return from the war. Tom marries someone suitable rather than someone he loves. Gatsby throws his life away chasing after a woman whose ultimate loyalty is to money rather than to him.
  
  We are even led to believe that actually obtaining the American Dream might not be possible in one’s own lifetime. Gatsby, despite a vast amount of wealth, finds himself unaccepted by those in East Egg. He also finds himself on the wrong side of the law. In the end, try as he might, he is unable to overcome the financial station into which he was born. The tragedy of Gatsby is the fact he wanted to do that in the first place.

QUOTES:

“In my younger years my father gave me some advice. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

“Why they came East I don’t know. I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.”

“I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possess some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life. Even when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio, it had always for me a quality of distortion.”

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther . . . And one fine morning—”

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and then retreated back into their money and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Final Thoughts:

I have always enjoyed this novel. It reminds me of the “rich people problems” television I grew up with, except that it is arguably (I understand disagreement on this point) more well written than “Beverly Hills 90210,” “The O.C.,” “Gossip Girl,” and their ilk.

Now I’m reimagining this book as a movie performed by the cast of 90210 (the original run of that show, not the unfortunate reboot.) Jason Priestly is obviously Gatsby. Shannon Doherty is Jordan Baker. Ian Zeiring is obviously Tom, Jennie Garth is Daisy… why didn’t this happen? They could have printed money with this movie in 1992.

One hundred years after this novel’s publication, Americans are once again lavishly wealthy in some locals, and the influence of said wealth continues to corrupt our pursuits and our morals. The novel and the themes in this book continue to be relevant. I recommend a re-read if it has been a while.

Addendum: On the theme of rich people problems on TV, I read the scene wherein Gatsby dies while humming “Hide and Seek” (Mmm, Whatcha Say) by Imogene Heap. I know most of you under 30 will not understand that reference to “The O.C.” so I encourage you to stream the show as it is a modern classic. You’ll have to trust me that the skit is funny. Are they still making awesome fictional TV shows about rich people in Southern California? I hope so.

Originally published July 31, 2021