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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

This is the book that started it all. I actually listened to this as an audio book read by Tim Robbins, the lead actor from Shawshank Redemption, when I was in my junior year of college. I have since then read a copy, seen both movies, visited the mansion used in the 1974 film as Gatsby mansion and willingly went down the rabbit hole that is literature. As this is such a widely read book and with the movies having done well in theatres I will limit the summary to the main points

The book opens with what reads as a memoir or journal entry, ” In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since, “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one… just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” This is an important entry as its sets not only the tone but also the mindset our narrator, Nick Carraway, relives his tale throughout the book. (Remember this! It will show up later) First we learn that Nick is a newly started bonds man in New York City and living on the “less fashionable” West Egg inhabitants of Long Island. He doesn’t know a soul there except an old college class mate who married his second cousin once removed, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, who live across the bay with the other old money types in East Egg. At his first convenience Nick schedules a lunch over at the Buchanan’s and from here forward the story increases in pace and nuances.

Gatsby is mentioned before the meal is even served on the patio by a friend of the Buchanan’s, Jordan Baker, who upon hearing that Nick lives on West Egg guesses that he must know Gatsby. Daisy is awoken to a level of awareness at the mention of the name as if a ghost had passed inches from her. The moment passes and we get not only a glimpse but a full interpretation of Tom’s character from himself recalling an article he had recently read and believed whole heartedly. (more later) A phone rings from inside the house and Tom leaves willingly despite the present company to answer it and is followed perhaps only a minute later by a preoccupied and worried looking Daisy. Here Jordan Baker who serves as out character bridging gossip through out the book informs Nick that Tom has a mistress. Jordan goes on further to explain that this is not the first and that in fact all the moving about the country the Buchanans have done is a direct result of complications rising from Tom’s infidelity.

The next scene we find Nick accompanying Tom on a trip to the city under the veil of a luncheon with old classmates and possible clients. As it were Tom had the idea to not only visit his mistress but to show her off to Nick in almost an approval seeking way as if he needed assurance that his side game was worth the risk. The two men pull into a small garage outside the city just after the split for East and West Egg joins the main road. The owner, a Mr. George Wilson, seemingly an over worked and underpaid yet completely satisfied in the toil of his life greets Tom with full regard. It is in this exchange that we learn Tom has offered a car to Mr. Wilson and that it has been a long standing business proposition between the men, when in actuality it has been the cover behind which Tom visits his mistress Mr. Wilson’s wife Myrtle. At this meeting Tom tells Myrtle to get into the city as soon as possible and the party scene that follows is a small portrait of the drive for excess that 1920’s society is noted for, heavy drinking, loose people, loose morals, and the tones of jazz providing a rhythm for it all.

Not long after the party scene the first encounter between our narrator and the title character comes during one of many lavish parties thrown by Mr. Gatsby though he himself doesn’t actually attend. The whole encounter is given a glow of oddity right from the start as Nick is the only one to ever receive an actual invitation to a Gatsby party. As explained by Nick people weren’t invited they just simply went there and indulged in the reverie of excess and bootleg liquor. Adding to the mystique of the party host we are given multiple origin stories from a throng of overserved partygoers who’s stale imaginations are refreshed in guessing the origins of the unrecognizable man behind the free flowing champagne. The stories range from a man who is a spy, the relation of a German ruler, and even a man who murdered someone once. Through the regaling of these tale one gets the sense that these are the same people who today would have subscriptions to tabloids and regard them as fact above rebut. At long last Nick is led away by an orderly of the house to a private meeting with a Mr. Jay Gatsby. (servant sounded to harsh a word for what the man was to Gatsby) As if the party had not been preposterous enough this first meeting was the cherry on top. Nothing of importance actually occurred only the exchanges of pleasantries and the hand of hospitality reaching to establish a connection. A connection that it turns out Gatsby had been seeking since the end of the first world war.

The next day, at the insistence of Gatsby, Nick joined him for a ride into the city for a lunch meeting that again had a second meeting. While Gatsby couldn’t bring himself to directly say what he was seeking from Nick he did give an account of his own background in an attempt to build trust between the two in Gatsby’s character. Here again the story relies on the bridging ability of Jordan Baker as she too had a private meeting with Gatsby at which he explained his request of Nick to arrange a meeting with Daisy. From Jordan we learn that Daisy and Gatsby had a past of which she herself was privy to but never connected the dots to when she began attending Gatsby parties.

(So till now I have given a relatively detailed summary of the book so you have a basic idea of the story. Now I am going to give a quick and less in depth summary of the true meat of the book. I am doing this because I want to get to the good part, in my mind, the analyzing of the characters and their motivations.)

After having tea at Nick’s small cottage Daisy and Gatsby reconnect and set light to their old flame from before the Great War and Daisy’s marriage to Tom. Their relationship progresses to the point of love once again and in quick fashion. Gatsby stops hosting parties and spends his time entirely with Daisy. Eventually the idea of Daisy separating from Tom and going with Gatsby to live the life they thought was ahead of them years ago comes to them both and is spearheaded with a lunch date at the Buchanans. The lunch leads to a trip into NYC where the point of the affair is pushed to a boiling point by Tom and confirmed by both Daisy and Gatsby. As Gatsby pushes and urges Daisy to follow through with their plan she has a breakdown in will and emotion. As a result she and Gatsby leave in a hurry to get to a car that she drives in an attempt to calm herself but instead ends in disaster. While passing the Garage of Mr. Wilson, Myrtle, trying to flee the oppression of the ordinary, runs into the street to what she believed was her beloved Tom’s car. Myrtle is killed instantly and witnesses say the car stopped only briefly then drove off. After stopping at the scene of the accident Tom, Nick and Jordan see a distraught Mr. Wilson whom Tom gives a feeble attempt to console. The next morning Mr. Wilson comes to the Buchanan residence with a loaded revolver and a disheveled look most artist wish they could capture. The would be bringer of justice is led astray by Tom’s quick thinking and apt ability to shirk responsibility. With a mind full of vengeance and hands shaking with anticipation Mr. Wilson finds Gatsby in his pool with a phone nearby awaiting the call of his beloved and fires three shots into Gatsby’s back and one into his own head. Afterwards Gatsby receives full blame for Myrtles’ death, is raked through the mud by the press, and abandoned by his hundreds of party goers and few close associates. Beside the presiding preacher then only people in attendance of the funeral were Nick Carraway and a Mr. Henry C. Gatz, Gatsby’s father.

Ok so that wasn’t as short as I thought it might be BUT now the fun starts!

Nick Carraway: While it is a common practice for a writer to use one of the characters as the source of the material in a book Nick is a strange case. Normally the character is an active participant in the events unfolding but here our guide does decidedly nothing. There were times I so wanted him to do something too, like in front of Tom and Myrtle’s apartment, he tried with less effort than a child trying to avoid its vegetables to get away. Then on the trip to New York near the end when there was a call even a demand for a sensible voice to break up the emotion driven screaming he again sat silent as if his voice was offensve.To this I have come to two ideas resolving this lack of action. 1.) Fitzgerald wanted a medium that had little to no bias through out the book or 2.) This was a character designed truly without a spine, an act less man hindered by his own opinion of himself. Either is possible and explainable with nearly the same evidence. I look back to the opening of the book and the advice Nick was giving from his father to withhold judgement because he was more privileged than he thought as the strongest piece of evidence. It could be seen as Fitzgerald giving you the dominant trait of Nick or a pass for Nick to be the readers looking glass. I don’t think there is a wrong way to look at it because in the end Fitzgerald portrays Nick as a victim. Nick knows he can’t possibly continue to see Jordan Baker as he had during the summer and he lost the one man in the vulgar upper society he respected in Gatsby. To counter that, you could question whether he was truly a victim of those things directly or a victim as a witness to a terrible tragedy. Instead of drawing a hard conclusion on Nick Carraway I will share my favorite moment of his in the book. The morning Gatsby was murdered as he was leaving the mansion and headed to his cottage he looked back to Gatsby and said “They’re a rotten crowd, you’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”

Jordan Baker: She is a small character overall, although key in moments of missing information and a catalyst to forward movement in the story line. I like her as a character because she was a woman of the time and of herself She was not above the excessive nature of the time but held her own ideas with the regard that they were hers and not one person among her could take that right from her. If the story had been set 40 years later she would have been what I think to be the model feminist. My favorite line from her occurs at a Gatsby party while with Nick, “… and I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”

Tom Buchanan: I characterize Tom as an old money nihilist, by that I mean he was given influence, power, and security simply because of the work his ancestors had done and while knowing the ins and outs of proper society he abandoned them thoroughly. He was the type that thought others should have morals when he decided they should, as he only became sensitive to the idea of infidelity when Daisy began to take part in it too. In his introduction to the story I mentioned an article he was discussing with the group at lunch. The article was one that claimed Nordics, basically just white people in general were responsible for all art, culture, and respected society in the world. As such creators it was now the duty of the Nordic elitist to keep the other races in their place as to secure a better future. To me this gave me all the insight into his person as I would ever need, but while analyzing this I believe Tom took it further. He didn’t just want to keep other races behind him but other classes too. Throughout the book he vocally expressed his disdain for “new money” types claiming they were all bootleggers and not one penny was made honestly. Then when he discovered such a man was encroaching on his life and property, as he undoubtedly saw Daisy as a thing and more prestige to his own name, did he become the champion of faithful marriage and morals while down playing his past mistakes. This and many more reason like battery and general nastiness is why we hate Tom.

Daisy Buchanan: Daisy feels underdeveloped, I don’t mean that Fitzgerald didn’t do enough work for his character but that she literally never matured beyond twelve years of age in maturity, and yet there are glimpses that she knows exactly what is happening. Again also at her introduction into the story she notices a bruise on her pinky that she attributes to something Tom did to her. She claims it is not that he did it on purpose but it was her own fault for marrying a “hulking brute of a man.” On the surface its a simple statement, but if you allow yourself to try to find meaning in it like I did it could be her first call to the group of her unhappiness. The bruises are Tom’s numerous mistresses that he of course never meant to hurt Daisy with yet there she is on the receiving end of a blow, although in this case emotionally rather than physical. With the numerous occasions the bruise would make a good comparison as the initial pain is there then a mark forms and after time will begin to fade and even be forgotten until later when a another strike hits the flesh and the process begins again. In my notes I compared Daisy to a feather or better a petal held aloft by the hot air blowing from those around her, the praise she received simply for her beauty, and then violently disturbed by the sudden passing by of a short-lived episode, Tom’s cheating and the subsequent moving across the country. I would even compare her to a hapless princess in some fairytale, completely blind to normal life and only influenced by others willing to make a decision. While she indulges in Gatsby’s plan for a while and even seems to enjoy it she falters. The one time seemingly in her entire life that she needs to make a decision and the forces that be are next to her awaiting the answer she wilts. (pun intended) What is frustrating about her is that she partially acknowledges this in her most notable line, ” I hope she’ll be a fool. That’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” it is here she is acknowledging her husbands total disregard for and their vows and yet she refuses to change the situation and sits in her pity saying it s best for women to be oblivious to the disturbances around them.

Jay Gatsby: There is, in my opinion, no more of a Shakespearian character. Veiled in mystery and inflamed by rumors there is the utmost interest in our title character. When I got the first origin story from Gatsby himself in the car with Nick I think I wanted to believe in him more than I actually could believe the story. I attribute that to Fitzgerald doing such a good job in creating a charismatic character, also there was something in the story Gatsby seemed to have rehearsed and told so many times that he even believed it. We are told of the passing of his parents, who were well-respected people from the mid-west, that had left him a small fortune that had dried up in a market panic before the war. The middle section of this tale is the only real part. He was a officer during the war and served valiantly, receiving medals from many allied countries, ‘even little Montenegro.” After the war he took part in a program that allowed some service men to stay and study at some of the top universities in Europe. Gatsby spent his short time there at Oxford, although he never graduated he made sure to never say that he was an Oxford man but that he went to Oxford. As told by Gatsby when he came back he was all but broke having not been allowed to reestablish himself before the war, and that reestablishment took some time and some fortunate business connections. What is later revealed is that Gatsby actually came from a very poor, but respected in their own right, family from Minnesota. Even from a young age he knew he was destined for a larger and grander life. While traveling through the mid west looking for work he came across a man named Dan Cody who was a tycoon of some sort who spent his days sailing. On their first encounter Cody’s ship was threatening to beach itself on rocks and Gatsby took action to prevent it. After this Cody took Gatsby under his wing and groomed him in the ways of the reigning high society. The two spent years sailing and enjoying the others company, the relationship became so important that Cody prepared a will to include Gatsby but he passed before it could be authenticated and Gatsby found himself poor again but with the abilities and manners of the East coast elite, then came the war. While still in training he joined his fellow officers at a house party thrown by the parents of Daisy. Their love was instantaneous and passionate, and changed Gatsby forever. At first he had the lofty goal of living a life his parents could only dream of and now it was a similar goal but demanded the inclusion of Daisy in it. I believe the reason for all his posturing is that he is very aware that even all the wealth in the world would not allow him access to the section of society he so wanted access to. As Tom openly held content for those who were forging new fortunes his counterparts did it silently and perhaps more damning. Then we come to his over powering hopeless romantic trait.

For all that could be said about his drive to better himself and break barriers in his way his hopeful romantic trait is surely his most prominent. It is so powerful that even the marriage of his beloved does not stop him in hoping for a life with her. He holds his enormous and costly parties just in the hopes that she will drop by. It is this sort of fixation that makes it seem to me that this was not what most consider to be love but obsession. It is my belief that Daisy was more of a symbol to him rather than another being, she not only symbolized what was the happiest time in his life but of a representation of the society and class he so wanted to be a part of. She became to him the last piece of the puzzle, a sort of thing that without her the rest of his achievements were meaningless. Considering these things has led me to believe that if Daisy had been brave and left Tom for Gatsby it would have been a larger tragedy. To me it seems Gatsby in all his learnings never learned how to be content. Not that one should find a secure place in life and hunker down in content, but Gatsby built his whole life on drive for something better. Perhaps and even most likely a man who lost his beloved to another man would initially feel a period of depression but eventually move on and yet Gatsby only saw it as another challenge. I can’t speak to what would have happened with Daisy and Gatsby had they gone together and left Tom but I suspect there would have been an early whirlwind of happiness followed by years of stagnation as there were no more obstacles or pursuits in front of them. Even though this is taking on a negative tone I still find myself admiring him as a character. Gatsby changed his own destiny through the old American adage of hard work with a little bit of bending of rules and while his hope for the love of his life may have taken him to a place of obsession even that is endearing in a way, just like other love stories. Even when poking holes in his traits and actions I find myself siding with Nick Carraway that Gatsby really was “… worth the whole damn bunch.”

Overall Thoughts, missed pieces:

This has always been one of my favorite books and so far as I can tell will remain so. As a person interested in history I love a story that occurs in a specific era and there are few as interesting as the early 1920’s. I also like that the book was a condemning view of the era and marking its faults within the same time period (published 1925), often books are written years or decades after the events. Not only did Fitzgerald do this during the era but near its’ peak and he got it right and has remained a credible depiction of what we know of the excessive nature during the 1920s. One thing I purposely left out in my review is the inclusion of a religious element that occurs in the last third of the book. A decrepit advertisement for an optometrist, Dr T. J. Eckleburg, depicts set of eyes painted with a knowing and unmoved gaze is compared to the presence of god seeing all the sins occurring under him. I left it out as I don’t see it as a major theme throughout the book and has an effect only on one man, George Wilson. It was the time of excess and jazz, bootleggers and flappers, and the time of speakeasies and recently empowered women suffragettes and still in the chaos and fast pace of the world one man fell victim to his own dreams and desire for love.

What’s next: Before I leave Gatsby alone completely I wanted to share an idea I had while creating my notes, that it is possible to compare this book to the market collapse of 1929 as it was the fault of excess and careless people abandoning the idea of moral hazard for short term gains. I am sure that someone else has thought of this and I hope they are more qualified than I to write about it and have done so. As for the blog I just finished reading The Idiot by Dostoyevsky this week but will take my time before I begin to write the review as I need time to digest it. The next two reviews will be of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and a review of both To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman as they are both from Harper Lee. I certainly hope I didn’t bore you and promise these will get better… eventually. Feel free to write a comment or ask a question below I will respond as quick as I can.

Here is the list of books I will be reviewing the first 14 are the ones I have already read and I won’t be going through the list in any particular order. I will say that there is a block of books by Isaac Asimov and David Sedaris as they are my favorite authors. (Also full disclosure apparently I can not count, I had actually read 18 on my list but as I had 105 books on my list I swapped a few out)

Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Catch 22 -Joseph Heller
The Moviegoer – Walker Percy
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
Go Set a Watchmen – Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Martian – Andy Weir
The Paris Wife – Paula McLain
The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
Prelude to Foundation – Isaac Asimov
Foundation – Asimov
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1984 – George Orwell
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
Animal Farm – Orwell
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brente
Night – Elie Wiesel
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
Crime and Punishment – Dostoyevsky
Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka
The Stranger – Albert Camor
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith
War and Peace – Tolstoy
Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
The Strand – Stephen King
All Quite on the Western Front – Erich Remorge
Don Quixote – Cervantes
The Perk of being a Wallflower – Chblesky
The Fountainhead – Rand
East of Eden – Steinbeck
The Velveteen Rabbit – Margery Williams
Love in the Time of Cholera- Gabriel Marquez
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
Walden – Henry David Thoreau
All the Presidents Men – Woodward Bernstein
Are You There God? It’s me Margaret – Blume
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Hemingway
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute – Grace Paley
The Prince – Niccolo Machiavelli
Brother Karamazov – Dostoyevsky
The Wealth of Nations – Adam Smith
Brave New World – Aldeus Huxley
How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Coregre
The Call of the Wild – Jack London
The Rise of T. Roosevelt – Edmund Morris
Dharma Bums – Jack Kerouac
Into Thin Air – John Krakauer
King Solomon’s Mines – H. Ride Haggard
Theodore Rex – Morris
Lonesome Dove – Larry McMarty
The Long Goodbye – Raymand Chandler
From Here to Eternity – James Jones
Zen and the Art of Moto Maintenance – Robert Pirsig
Self Reliance – Ralph Emerson
White Noise – Don DeLillo
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Road – Carmac McCarthy
Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
Peace Like a River – Leif Enyer
The Crisis – Churchill
The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer
Beyond Good and Evil – Nietzsche
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Revolutionary Road – Richard Yates
A Farewell to Arms – Hemingway
On the Road – Kerouac
Native Son – Richard Wright
Education of a Wondering Man – Louis L’Amour
Cannery Row – Steinbeck
The Outsiders – S.E. Hinton
Paradise Lost – John Milton
Oil – Upton Sinclair
The Saint in N.Y. – Leslie Charteris
The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson
In the Garden of Beasts – Larson
Wait Till Next Year – Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Lost Continent – Bill Bryson
A Walk in the Woods – Bryson
Robots and Empire – Asimov
Currents of Space – Asimov
The Stars, Like Dust – Asimov
Pebble in the Sky – Asimov
Foundation and Empire – Asimov
Second Foundation – Asimov
Foundation’s Edge – Asimov
Foundation and Earth – Asimov
Forward the Foundation – Asimov
Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris
Holidays on Ice – Sedaris
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk – Sedaris

100by30

Update

Believe in the green light

The List

Preface