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The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Start date: September 8, 2020

Finish date: November 22, 2020

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The Midnight Library - SPOILERS
By Nadine · 4 posts · 9 views

last updated Feb 03, 2021 10:43PM

The Great Gatsby - SPOILERS
By Nadine · 9 posts · 5 views

last updated Dec 01, 2020 10:12AM

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Nov 22, 2020 Juliette rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. A couple of random thoughts I've written down for a bookclub after listening to the audiobook of The Great Gatsby :

I’m so glad I’ve finally read The Great Gatsby. I remember that I loved seeing the movie adaptation with Leonardo Di Caprio in a theater when I was at the conclusion of my teenage years. I’m always curious when I haven’t read the book, to know how many liberties the film took from the original material and I must say now that it was fairly close to the text. I rewatched the film yes A couple of random thoughts I've written down for a bookclub after listening to the audiobook of The Great Gatsby :

I’m so glad I’ve finally read The Great Gatsby. I remember that I loved seeing the movie adaptation with Leonardo Di Caprio in a theater when I was at the conclusion of my teenage years. I’m always curious when I haven’t read the book, to know how many liberties the film took from the original material and I must say now that it was fairly close to the text. I rewatched the film yesterday night, just after finishing the audiobook.

I’ve found the book really modern for a classic of the 20’s, both for the universality of the themes and the ways they were approached. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s prose is fluid and gorgeous. I’ve been charmed by his writing style.

If you’ve watched Peaky Blinders, I’ve found a couple of connections to make between Tommy Shelby and Jay Gatsby, around the issues a poor guy rising in high society faces.
Gatsby made his own money and a name for himself. He fell from a height when he discovered that despite his hard work, his exuberant generosity (not really since it was only for Daisy but yeah) and everything he has done, he would never reach the spheres he was looking to enter. He’d never be accepted as a legitimate part of the upper-class, as Tom Buchanan hints all along the story. That he has lost any right and pretension to true respectability the day of his birth. That the famous American dream is just a veil of smoke. He goes through the terribly sudden realization that money can’t buy everything. And I can’t help to think that, even if it’s not the only reason, it’s still one that has driven Daisy’s choice and drawn the line of what she was ready to accept. They’d have been happy together for a short period of time, if only she could have kept him hidden in a closet to kiss and maintained unstained her life with her husband. If only, no one knew.

It’d be easy to only hate on Daisy for the sadness she created with her indecisiveness, and even if I’m not the greatest fan of her character, I think it’s also necessary to remember how Gatsby immaturely draped himself in his well-crafted fantasy he dreamed about for years and tried to force on her. He kept insisting that she has never loved Tom and therefore should run away together. He was so blinded by his own dripping love and his visceral distaste for Tom, that he couldn’t even conceive that she may have been happy at some point when they were apart (unlike him). That she may have seen something in Tom he doesn’t. (Don’t get me wrong, I hate Tom. He’s a terrible racist jerk. But I’m thankfully not Daisy.). Daisy didn’t really know Gatsby. She understood it when he lost his temper with Tom Buchanan in the hotel. She may have been frightened. Being a woman at that time was also favouring to rely on a boring and dull but familiar safety with a cheating husband, than risking being stuck in marriage with a potentially dangerous unknown who may be unstable financially since he’s involved in weird businesses. I guess that can be linked with Daisy’s line : "That's about the best a girl can hope for these days, to be a pretty little fool". Better to be content with a mediocre marriage because it’s ‘your place as a woman’, than dreaming for more, romantically and intellectually. If you’re not able to have bigger dreams, it’s easier to be content with what you have and be relatively happy, than questioning it perpetually. It’s not very hopeful, but it’s very fitting with Daisy’s practical and resigned character, as she revealed herself being in the end despite her dreamy attitude all along.

The rejection of Gatsby by his supposed ‘peers’ is pretty clear when he dies. He’s alone in death, like he’s been in life despite the appearances, at the sole exception of the friendship he nurtured with Nick. How sad, the idea that no one would come to your funerals is hideous.

Was I also the only one who noticed that Nick’s obsession and fascination for Gatsby was sometimes close to be homoerotic? I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a bunch of pages of Jay Gatsby/Nick Carraway fics on AO3. Like I understand he’s impressed by the man, but still. I said what I said.

The main weakness of the book to me is the smoothness of the narrator, how he’s a bit inconsistent sometimes. More than once, he’s an observer of the scenes, a way for the story to happen, than an active participant of it. As if he watched his life be conducted in front of him like a film, but rarely dared to break the fourth wall to intervene in it. Nevertheless it wasn’t a flaw that was too detrimental to the whole story.
I also really liked Jordan. I would have wished to see more of her.

I will stop here because I could still go on for long but I can’t afford to do that all day (even if it’d be a pleasure) and it’d be too long that no one would want to read my wall of text. But I’d be happy to keep chatting on it if you feel like it! ...more

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