Review of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

If anyone ever meets me in real life, one of the biggest facts to know is that I am obsessed with the 1920s.

Whether it’s through film history or material culture of the period, I always thought that if I was going to go into a PhD program in history, it would be specializing in the early American period of this century, or East Asian studies.

That said, one of my core reasons for this obsession has been because of the fact I read The Great Gatsby in high school like so many other American high schoolers.

And back then, I didn’t appreciate it as much as I should have.

I hated reading in high school because of the English curriculum in the US and how it forces you to find meaning in the mundane, which is a useful skill in some ways, but in others it strips kid of the natural joy of reading.

It destroyed my love of reading for a hot minute, that’s for sure. It took until I was in college for me to find appreciation in these books again, and I revisited them, like The Great Gatsby.

Anyways, I’ve rambled enough. Let’s get into the review!

A story of love and mistakes in 1920s New York City.

I think a lot of people know the plot of The Great Gatsby by now, but let’s go over the basics. We have Nick, the narrator who serves as a spectator to everything happening all around him.

He moves to the West Egg on Long Island, right outside of New York City, in order find a new life and career there after World War I. He finds out he lives next to Jay Gatsby, a wealthy man who’s famous for throwing parties yet never participates in them.

When Nick meets up with his distant cousin Daisy Buchanan, he gets deeper into their world. She’s married to Tom, a footballer from Yale Nick knows, and they have just moved to Long Island, too, across from Gatsby’s mansion.

Nick also meets Daisy’s friend Jordan, who tells him that Tom is having an affair with a poorer woman. named Myrtle. Over the course of the novel, Nick discovers Daisy and Gatsby have a thing, too, and that might lead to all of their relationships unraveling in the long run.

Obviously, if you don’t know the rest of the novel, go look it up. The Great Gatsby very much is a piece seeped into the lore and history of the twenties, which is what Fitzgerald lived through.

There’s a reason this has become known as one of the biggest novels of that period, as it’s brimming with references to the laws and lives of the rich during this period. It’s important to put a note that these are wealthy people, and those like Myrtle and her husband were the more ordinary types.

One of the most interesting parts of the novel to me is about how Nick serves no role in the story except to observe everything going down.

I find this puts some emotional distance between us and the characters involved with the drama driving the force of the novel.

People always pick apart this angle and also make memes about it, but looking at it from a critical lens, I find it such a useful tool as a writer myself to frame the story.

Overall Thoughts

This is such a beloved classic in American literature, especially in the past one hundred years, and my own copy of the book has become more tattered as I keep returning throughout in the time I’ve grown as a human and a writer.

I like Fitzgerald’s work as a whole, and this is such an interesting look at the lavish time of the twenties and critique of the moral decay happening along with it.

That said, I know this isn’t the book for everyone, and if I was super into the twenties like most people aren’t, I probably would not be enjoying Gatsby as much as I do.

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