A Blast from the Past: The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

A Blast From the Past is a weekly meme where I intend to review book that I read in the past that has had some form of impact upon me, whether it be good or bad.

The book that I have chosen this Sunday is The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald. I say I chose it loosely, a lovely reader of my blog contacted me and asked for my opinion of this book and as I had read it in the past I decided to post a review of it in this meme.

I read this book some time ago, I can't remember when, and I have to admit that when I read it I wasn't overly impressed. Thinking about it for this review, however, has changed my opinion of it somewhat.

The Great Gatsby is a short story, but a powerful one. The narrator is Nick, a young man who has moved to Long Island to live while he learns the bond business. He lives in West Egg, full of new money, and eventually forms a friendship with his strange neighbour, Jay Gatsby, at one of Gatsby's famously wild parties. He also spends time with his cousin Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom, who live in the even richer area of East Egg. They introduce him to Jordan Baker, a young famous girl with whom he forms a relationship. The summer becomes strange as Nick learns that Tom has a lover that he spends time with away from Daisy and that Gatsby is in fact in love with Daisy herself, having had a relationship of sorts with her in the past. Everything goes very wrong with Tom discovers the affair between his wife and Gatsby and the story ends in tragedy for everyone.

The story is about the materialism and consumerism that consumes the world following WWI. Fitzgerald was making a comment about the lifestyle of the time; he displays it as era lacks depth, morals and values. Materialism is displayed as a corrupting force; for example at one stage of their lives Gatsby and Daisy had genuine feelings for each other, but the love of money and material wealth prevents any real renewal of those feelings for each other, or rather, creates a real barrier to acting upon those feeling.

I found it inconsistent that whilst material possession and wealth were so important to all the characters, there was still this class system operating despite the existence of wealth. It wasn't just about having money, it was about how you got it. Daisy and Tom held a higher rank in this class system that Gatsby because they were born with money, whereas Gatsby had to work for his. Myrtle herself has no money really, and is therefore decidedly middle class, but she uses her affair with Tom to live like those of the upper class for a period of time. Most people are depicted as lacking in morals and simply concerned with their wealth or the appearance of having wealth.

To me Fitzgerald was clearly warning of the impending failure of materialism. I am not saying that he had predicted to the Great Depression or anything along those lines, but it is clear that all the characters in some way or another fail. For example, despite the empire of wealth that Gatsby has built up in the hopes of winning Daisy's love, he is ultimately unable to do so and fails in the most real of ways.

The characters in the book are very shallow, you only ever see what they display to each other and nothing deeper. I am sure that this is quite deliberate on Fitzgerald's part. I believe that it is another form of social comment on the superficiality of the materialism of the times. The result, however, is that I couldn't get a grasp of the characters themselves, couldn't see who they really were, only what they wanted others to see of them. I felt sometimes like I was watching this series of events unfold but was never quite sure who the protagonist was. Nick is obviously the narrator and Gatsby is 'The Great Gatsby' but who were these people really?

I think that this is where the book fell short for me. I don't mean that I think it was a bad book at all, as I said, I think that the characters were deliberately created to be superficial, and their inner selves elusive as a comment on the materialism of the times. But for me, I love reading books where I can really get to know the characters and I couldn't in this book.

Having said that, Fitzgerald is clearly talented and an amazing writer. It is incredible that in such a short book he was able to create such a detailed world; only a truly proficient writer could achieve this. It is sad to know that Fitzgerald was not appreciated in his time in the same way that he is now, but I suppose that is often the case for authors of this calibre. It wasn't until I really sat down to think about this books and its many themes, that I really appreciated just how complex a book it is.

For as much as I couldn't say that I honestly really enjoyed this book, I believe that it such a special story, so complex and rich, that no review of mine could ever do it justice.

I have also reviewed The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F Scott Fitzgerald, you can read the review here.

I would be really interested to know what other people think of The Great Gatsby, I am sure that it is a book where there would be many differing opinions about it and reactions to it.
Feel free to leave a comment or a link back to your own post about a blast from the past that you want to share with everyone.