Anyone who knows me knows that I have a lot of love and adoration for F. Scott. Fitzgerald’s novel ‘The Great Gatsby’. Some people share my love for the novel, others less so. In my high levels of excitement and anticipation for the release of the graphic novel adaptation of the book, I thought I would compose a post explaining exactly why I like this book from 1925 so much.
*If you have not read/seen/are unfamiliar with The Great Gatsby – this post does have spoilers. The book has been out for nearly 100 years so I’m not sorry.*
First of all: It’s realistic. Okay, I don’t know what life was like in the 1920s to compare…but (and I have researched this a little) the term roaring twenties wasn’t just dreamt up one day. It was a time of flapper girls, prohibition and rise of speakeasies, extreme wealth and decadence…all of which are present in the novel. However, the 1920s wasn’t exclusively people doing the Charleston in their flapper dresses with a glass of gin in their hands. It was a highly racist time, a hard time to get by if you were anything but high class, there was a large social class divide and there was the prohibition (the law forbidding transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcohol) which led to the introduction of speakeasies (secret establishments where alcohol was illegally sold to patrons during the Prohibition)…not to mention the book was set in 1922 – only 4 years after the first world war ended. The book doesn’t disguise any of this. It writes about 1920’s America romantically, sure, and I’m aware the book itself is still not a 100% true representation of the time period, but I think it’s quite something that it doesn’t glamorise the era, and that both the bad as well as the good are incorporated into the novel.
However, it isn’t just the time period that has been written realistically. It’s the characters, which brings me onto point two. In my opinion, none of the characters are plainly good or bad. There are some who do bad things – Tom Buchannan as an obvious choice – and whilst I think his character can be quite vile, I don’t think he is a bad person. I could easily write a whole blog post on all of the characters individually and what I think about them! (Now that is an idea…thoughts, everyone?). They are just ordinary people with messy lives – the same as all of us. They do things with the best interests, they make mistakes…granted by the end of the book there are 3 dead characters which is a bit drastic but on the whole, they are characters that you could imagine being very much real because they’re not drastically good or evil, and I can visualise the reasons behind their actions from their points of view.
Next reason I love this book: The language is beautiful. I believe I have read this book 3 times now, currently on the fourth as I read the graphic novel, and it still doesn’t feel tiresome. Reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words truly paint images in my mind and feels more like I’m reading poetry than a novel, from the elaborate descriptions of Gatsby’s parties right down to the dialogue of the characters. Furthermore, this may be the English Literature student in me coming alive again, but so much depth can be found within his words. The American Dream symbolism being the most obvious, but every time I re-read the book, I still find new things to take away from the book and I still find myself thinking there may be deeper meanings and messages hidden within the words.
It’s not even just the symbolism of the American Dream, there is the imagery, the metaphors and every other literary device that can be found…but there is also the themes within the writing. The two big themes I have picked up on in the books are obvious ones. Firstly – of how wealth and power are connected, especially at the time period in which it is set, and secondly – corruption. One thing that is not subtle and the book makes quite clear is that money is not everything, and it certainly is not a direct route to happiness. Jay Gatsby certainly proves that.
Finally, and this may be somewhat depressing that this is a reason I love the book so much…there is no happy ending. I like how the book isn’t predictable. When Jay and Daisy meet again and supposedly fall back in love…it would be easy to assume Daisy leaves Tom, Tom ends up with Myrtle and they all run off into the sunset happy as anything. Yet instead we end up with 3 dead people, Daisy and Tom still together despite everything (although I could write a blog post about that alone), and everyone deeply unhappy. Depressing as that may be, there isn’t always a happy ending and I think if everyone did end up with who they wanted to be with and ran off into the sunset, that would be too predictable, and I think especially with the time period the book was both set and published, the unhappy ending is very fitting, and could even be a metaphor for something….(hoping I don’t need to spell it out).
Perhaps I am overthinking and all of this is in my head alone…but isn’t that the beauty of literature? There is never one singular answer, no right or wrong, but rather literature makes you think and look deeper at things. That’s what I love about this book so much. It never grows old, there’s such depth to the story and the writing and I can read it time and time again and still think of something new.
One Show at a Time 