Summarizer

[Matt]

In the beginning of the book, The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway had just arrived in New York in the summer of 1922, where he moved to work in the bond business. He rented a house on a part of Long Island called West Egg, where the newly rich people live. His next door neighbor is Gatsby. One night, he drives out to East Egg to have dinner with his cousin Daisy and her husband, Tom Buchanan, a former member of Nick’s social club at Yale. After dinner, when Nick arrives home, he sees Gatsby for the first time.Nick and Tom then go to the Valley of Ashes with Myrtle.

[Feliks]

Gatsby is looking out at the sea, in hopes of spotting the white whale.

[Geoffrey]

But the whale is covered with seaweed that it has gathered to its hide as it traversed the Sargasso Sea, intent in eluding capture by the USS Ahab and the Fujiyama japanese ship. It is now Green with Peace as it lumbers past the Long Island Sound, intent on its trip back to Nantucket for safety from the eyes of the descendants of the rum/slave/molasses trade who see in the ancient animal, 1000 candles of light.

But safety it has not. The sharks of Wall Street are plundering the seas with their mighty hooks, deriving from speculative ventures and capitalist Ponzoi schemes that will sink the mightiest of mammals to the ocean´s bottom.

[Jan]

I was surprised when I finished the book - it has been called a candidate for the Great American novel and it's about the American Dream, yet what was Fitzgerald really saying? I felt he was saying the American Dream, at least at that time (1925), was bankrupt on several levels. (And, if I am correct, maybe the 1929 crash proved him right.) Assuming I didn't misunderstand what I read, Fitzgerald would be even more convinced today. I am somewhat surprised by those who see the Great Gatsby quite differently.