Hello readers!
I have been in control of this blog for about seven months and I can’t believe that this is my first blog post about my favorite book, The Great Gatsby.
I know I have mentioned it in numerous other blog posts but I think it deserves its own post. So these are my top 10 favorite things about my favorite book. *SPOILERS ALERT*
1. Jay Gatsby
How can you not love this man? I mean he definitely has his issues, but as a love interest, he is high on my list of favorites.
When we read about Gatsby’s past we begin to have sympathy for him. He was a young, poor, military man who desperately wants to marry Daisy. After she rejects him, Gatsby waits for her for as long as needed.
His love never fails and everything he does he does for her. I mean how does that not make your heart throb?
2. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Writing
Tell me how you don’t fall in love with his writing after reading this paragraph:
“This is a valley of ashes–a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.”
His words flow together so perfectly and it makes so much sense. I mean I aspire to write as beautifully as he does.
3. The Fabulous Parties
I am not a party person and never will be but I imagine myself attending one of his lavish parties and dancing amongst a sea of people.
And the concept that this mysterious guy has huge parties and most of the people who attend have never met the host, yet they still keep coming to the parties every week is very intriguing.
4. All The Love Triangles
The first time I read this book I was confused for the first half about who was in love with who.
““Neither of them can stand the person they’re married to.”“Can’t they?”“Can’t stand them.” She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. “What I say is, why go on living with them if they can’t stand them? If I was them I’d get a divorce and get married to each other right away.””
This quote explains how messed up everything is. Fitzgerald did an amazing job at creating characters that you love to hate. It seems that everyone is in love with multiple people and no one is ever happy. It feels so real because nowadays not everything works out perfectly.
The first time I read it I just as if I was living in the world with these characters.
5. Dr. T. J Eckleburg
Yes, I know that this is a billboard and not an actual character. But I am amazed how Fitzgerald is able to make a billboard seem like a main character.
The beginning of chapter two has an amazing description of a place that lies between the fictional East and West Egg. That is where this billboard is and everyone looks at it as if the eyes are watching them suffer.
It gives me the chills just thinking about it.
6. The Gatsby mansion
Gatsby was a poor man who found fortune in a ways that are never fully explained to the reader. Each story he tells explains a deferent way that he got his money. Anyway, he got a lot of money and moved into a huge mansion on the bay.
“Gatsby’s house – The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden.”
He explains that there are some rooms that he never goes in because he forgets about them. He lives in the house by himself so the parties help him feel less lonely even though he rarely attends them.
7. It is a rather short book.
Usually, the size of the book doesn’t matter to me. Cause a story that is 1,400 pages can have a simple story with only a few characters that everyone loves or a book can be 150 pages and still give the reader the sense that they journeyed with the characters.
The Great Gatsby is the latter. It is a short book but it packs a punch. From page one you are immersed in this high society world where everyone is hiding something and you hate them all. The tension and intrigue are maintained all the time and it makes it so hard to put the book down.
8. There Are No Happy Endings.
I know this seems like an odd thing to be on my favorite list, but the minute I finished the book I commented to my teacher about how I loved that there were no happy endings.
Each character was so focused on getting what they wanted that they didn’t realize how stupid they were being.
“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”
I won’t spoil much but there are two deaths in the book and that kind of cuts off some of the love triangles. All of the characters were miserable at the beginning of the book and it only gets worse over the course of the summer.
9. The Green Light
A major factor of the book is that when Gatsby was looking for a place to live he chose the house across the bay from Daisy. He knew which house was hers because she had a green light at the end of her dock.
The first time the narrator sees Gatsby he is reaching one arm out towards the green light. That green light became the representation of Daisy in Gatsby’s mind. The very end of the book describes Gatsby’s longing for the green light.
“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—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms further . . . And one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
It is such a strong symbol which is essential to the outcome of the book.
10. It Never Fails To Get Me On An Emotional Rollercoaster
This book rips my heart out. I fell in love with the characters and I felt as if I spent the entire summer with them.
This book made me cry, laugh and feel every emotion in between. It’s a love story within a love story and it takes the American Dream and blows it out of proportion and then tears it apart in every way.
In Conclusion.
I fell in love with this book from page two and I have read it multiple times since then. I would recommend this book to everyone. My favorite quote: “So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.”
Quote of the day :“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald