The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Reasons, why, I read this book:

* I watched the movie trailer “The Great Gatsby”. I was simply awe with wonder. The trailer is full of life -grandeur, opulent, with lights, parties, music, singing, dancing and sudden spasms of uncontrolled emotions. I thought if a trailer is like that, then, how would be the movie? Most important, how would be the book on which this movie based?

* Because of what I heard - “the book is widely regarded as a "Great American Novel" and a literary classic.”

* The Modern Library named it the second best English-language novel of the 20th Century.

* This book is a part of “Time's List of the 100 Best Novels”.

* Several Goodreads friends of mine immensely liked and highly rated this book.

* I am a little behind in “Goodreads Book Reading Challenge, 2012”. So I am reading only short books and this one has a mere-200 pages.

Beginning Line:

“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," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”

Read, mind said wow, such an intriguing line, yes, you are absolutely correct, Mr. Fitzgerald. Sometimes we forget this and what we do? Just picture the people in a way we want, attribute the characters we seen not in them, but in our eyes only, not ready to understand them, not ready to give a least shit on them - suppose we do, that is also the way we feel, began to criticize them. We criticize them saying this, that, every bullshit but not ready to accept that he/she is not me and he/she hasn’t had the advantages that we have had. 

The Great Gatsby isn’t great instead it’s a tragic tale, simple but well composed, finely narrated, about Jay “Great” Gatsby, who came from rages into riches, who orchestrated opulent parties, but himself absent in most of them, who loved a single woman till his death, for that he was killed. 

I must appreciate the author. The writing is intense, full of life in detailing the things, describing the scenes with a realistic aura that looks like a painter painted an ordinary hut but with so much precision and passion that it is looking like a villa in a countryside.

The best thing about this book is Nick as a narrator who observed every virtue of the Gatsby. Other characters are empty. The story started and ended very quickly which, might be avoided the unnecessary details, but left the story incomplete. Gatsby is good, but he could have been great only if didn’t choose Daisy. Daisy is a woman with a fiery burning passion. She chooses Tom to marry over Gatsby. But she wants Gatsby’s love. About Tom, I don’t have any specific opinion. Actually I don’t consider him much as a part of the story much either, even Tom was the reason for the tragedy. Tom and Daisy, as Nick said, are simply careless people who do things carelessly for which people like Gatsby are needed to pay, a high price, sometimes with people lives. In the end, what happened between Nick and Jordan, I didn’t understand. 

“Can’t repeat the past?…Why of course you can!”.

This is what Gatsby said. At that moment my reaction was “what fuck he thinks he is doing”. Recently, I just failed in that. But, whole heartily, I wished he could do that; change the Past and make Daisy love him. Is it possible to change the Past? I, myself want to do that; undo the things I did and do the things I didn’t. I know Gatsby is not only the one and will not be the one who tried to repeat the past. But, all these for whom? For the people like Daisy who took the careless decisions for which Gatsby needed to take the blame. When he said that, I am totally afraid of the thought that is Gatsby inspiring me to repeat the past which is almost succeeded in erasing myself out from my own life. In the end, Gatsby failed, no defeated by his love for Daisy, most accurately Daisy herself made Gatsby to be defeated.

Ending Line:

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther ... And one fine morning ---”

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Mr. Fitzgerald again bewildered me with unimpeachable words.  I completed the book. Just sitting there, thinking this phrase only. What I was feeling, didn’t know. I didn’t get the answer why did Daisy leave Gatsby? May be I will never know the answer.