“You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.”
The Great Gatsby
F.Scott Fitzgerald
1925
Classic / Drama
I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy .
Description
Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan.
Everybody who is anybody is seen at the glittering parties held in millionaire Jay Gatsby's mansion in West Egg, east of New York. The riotous throng congregates in his sumptuous garden, coolly debating Gatsby's origins and mysterious past. None of the frivolous socialites understands him and among various rumours is the conviction that 'he killed a man'. A detached onlooker, Gatsby is oblivious to the speculation he creates, always seems to be watching and waiting, though no one knows what for.
"But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot."
Review
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers.
The story is of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his new love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted "gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession," it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.
Book Extracts
It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy - it increased her value in his eyes
With the influence of the dress, her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laugher, her gestures, her assertions became move violently affected moment by moment, and as she expended the room grew smaller around her, until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot thought the smoky air.
(She)rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in disdain
What foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short winded elations of men.
No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night
even though she was gone from it, was pervades with a melancholy beauty
(Its) always the city seen for the first, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty of the world
It is invariably saddening to look though new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment
Culture References
Film Adaptations
The Great Gatsby (1974)
Drama
The Great Gatsby (2013)
Drama/Comedy
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