Book review: The Great Gatsby (Book by: F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Ethan Chan ☺

Book review: The Great Gatsby

Book by: F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby is a fictional tale of love, lust, and jealousy. The story takes place in Long Island. It is the 1920s, and “gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession”. Narrated by Nick Carraway, it goes into the details of the love of Daisy and Gatsby. Daisy, however, is reluctantly wed to Tom, because at the moment when she had to make the choice, Gatsby was in a financial slump. However, Daisy knew she loved Gatsby, and the same went for Gatsby.

The theme of this book is obviously love. When characters love one another, sometimes jealousy and anger occur. In this case, Daisy had loved Gatsby, and Tom was very mad at Gatsby. There are many confusing moments in this book when you read it, because it may not be immediately obvious. I did not realize who Nick had loved until one of the two had said “I love you”. It's really hard to understand up to mid-way, but from there on it's a bit easier.

The main characters in this book have quite a bit of depth. It probably could have been a bit better, but I think that it's satisfactory. However, I think that some of the other characters could have been given a bit more description. In one part, you see a criminal who crashed his car into a wall. However, this had nothing to do with the story, and could have been left out entirely. In fact, we never see this man again. I feel that there were sometimes too many characters, and it was not necessary to have so many. The author should have left out some characters, using the extra space to flesh out the main characters more.

This book's writing style is really hard to understand sometimes. Sometimes I cannot tell what the author is trying to convey. It all gets confusing, since you really have to pay attention to what happens in the story in order to actually understand it. I was half asleep when I was reading one part, and I learned the consequences when I did not understand most of the next part. It makes it so you almost have to be paying attention at all times when you read it.

The wording in this book is absolutely astounding. It amazes me that the author barely ever uses the same word in each paragraph. I don't think that he has ever used the same adjective in this book more than ten times. I would think that this book is a great way to find out new words. This may be an exaggeration, but I think it would be impossible to read this without a dictionary.

However, I have yet to get to the most important part. I really mean this when I say this: only hardcore readers should read this. It may sound ridiculous, but it's really hard to keep up with the story. You really have to have read a lot of books to understand this one. Sometimes it switches scenes without warning, and I am left wondering what happened. You can never be forgetful, and have to keep track of the story.

To conclude, this book is okay. I think that the story was pretty interesting, but sometimes it gets boring reading it, since you don't know whats going on. It's hard to keep track of what's going on, but it all makes sense at the end. The ending was also very tragic, and it turns for the worse for Gatsby. So as a result, I recommend it for only those who can take sad endings, and those who are hardcore readers. Readers 18+ will probably enjoy it more than younger readers. It's simply too much confusion for me to bear, so I can only give it 2.5/5. Cold love is really the best way to describe this book.

-Ethan ★★½