The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald was first published in 1925 and it is one of the most heart wrenching stories I have ever read. It is an American classic, a romance and foremost a tragedy. The Great Gatsby's main themes are the complex reality of love, the continuous destructive cycles of life, wealth and what it does to people and the lies of the American dream. It is set in the gorgeous 1920’s in New York. The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway, an honest and completely average young man in the bond business. Nick moves to New York to West Egg, one of two protruding peninsulas. East Egg is across the bay. Nick soon gets swept up in the insane lives of the wealthy people around him. Tom and Daisy Buchannan his cousin, Jordan Baker a famous golfer who fascinates him like no other, and most of all Gatsby the rich neighbor next door who throws decadent parties for the whole town every week. Nick watches the crazy lives of everyone unfold and watches them simultaneously escape and deal with the repercussions of fierce, forbidden and, impossible love. Hidden secrets, fake identities all told by an unreliable narrator. The whole book is about the truth of wealth and how little it really matters in the end. The first time I read this book was a few years ago and I was instantly overcome by emotion at the language and storyline. One of the points that most fascinates me is Nick and how he is an unreliable narrator. On the first page he says that he never judges anyone and then immediately passes a judgment, “I’m inclined to reserve all judgements..and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores'' (Fitzgerald 1) showing how we can not completely believe Nicks interpretation of events throughout the books. We see Daisy as this desirable impossibly wonderful person but that is really just Nick's impression of her, with her money filled voice and soft flowing movements she is a wispy floating character that is immediately loved by the reader despite her many flaws. We see the complexity of wealthy lives like Tom's mistress who Daisy doesn’t seem to mind at all and the hypocrisy of Tom getting mad at Daisy for loving Gatsby. The main plot is Daisy and Gatsby having a long unrequited love and her being with him despite her husband. What's interesting about this is how Gatsby spent his entire life after meeting her doing everything in order to keep her. He went to war, bought a house and threw these insane parties just in the hope of her stumbling in and him seeing her again. A quote that really impacted me was about the green light at the end of Daisy's dock across from Gatsby. When Gatsby and Daisy finally reconnect he shot her a tour of his house and shows her the light and Nick says, “it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of the light had now vanished forever” (Fitzgerald 60) which i think is genuinely one of the most gorgeous quotes ever that perfectly sums up the love and pain of that moment. The whole story is filled with beautiful little things like that, which really makes it such an amazing experience to read. One of the main points is about how the American dream has these major flaws, despite Gatsby being rich beyond measure and has everything he wants, he still isn’t happy. It sort of reminds me of To Kill A Mockingbird in the way that it is supposed to be a typical American village but despite America being the land of the free, it still has huge flaws. It also really makes you think about the huge impact people have on each other without even realizing. Daisy never really knew how much Gatsby loved her and didn’t seem to care once she found out. Gatbsy loved her with his entire heart and soul and she didn’t even bother to come to his funeral. It always makes me teary every time I read it, feeling the waves of simple joy in the midst of tragedy and the fickleness of humans and wealth. People came in floods to Gatsby party yet only one of them came to the funeral. This is honestly one of my favorite books ever and it is one of the most emotional, painful books to read with the bittersweetness interwoven on each page.
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