The Great Gatsby

The thing I like about the Great Gatsby, is that you imagine it’s a glitzy and glamorous romp through the roaring 20’s, but as you get into the story, it’s dark and lonely and depressed. And that is what it’s saying about America. Pretty astute stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Fitzgerald paints a protagonist - Nick - as a bit of an outsider in the exciting jazz world of 20’s New York. He meets a neighbour - Jay Gatsby - who holds lavish parties every night, and it’s revealed to be a hollow attention-grab for the love of his life Daisy, a distant relative of Nick’s. The story unfolds in suspicion and jealousy around Gatsby from Daisy’s husband and from Nick himself, who’s trying to figure out if this guy is really what he appears to be.

I found the soap-opera drama to be very pleasing. In the beginning, Nick believes Gatsby is an enigmatic figure, shrouded in mystery - even when in their first meeting, they’ve been talking for some time before Nick realises it’s him. Daisy struggles with her relationship with her husband, who’s having an open and brazen affair with a local mechanic’s wife. The husband, Tom, is suspicious of Daisy and Gatsby, who wants Daisy to love him and be with him. Finally in the last third of the book, disaster strikes this whirlpool of tension, Gatsby wants Daisy to admit she never loved Tom, Tom accuses Gatsby of making his fortune illegally, and Gatsby makes a terrible sacrifice to save Daisy from a terrible fate, even after she decides to stay with Tom.

Fitzgerald writes austerely and with some distain for the rich. Look, reader, at what all this opulence and luxury has come to. When everything can be bought even life is worthless. He describes his characters, the way they move, in strange physical detail and writes as in a journal, with a moody melancholy that clearly had some influence on Kerouac and Ginsberg alike.