Great Gatsby Movie Vs Book

Alyssa Mahler
Professor Weimer
English Comp 1
30 November 2016
The Great Gatsby
Because of the major time difference of the production of the book “The Great Gatsby” by Fitzgerald and the movie by Lurhmann, there were modifications to the film to fit the present day time. Scenes were cut and characters personalities were changed to catch the audience’s attention and keep the young viewers interested. “The Great Gatsby” is a story about a rich man who is on a quest to get his life together for a woman named Daisy. She is already with someone but Gatsby hopes she will leave him soon. In the mix of everything people are partying and Gatsby hits a woman with his car and she dies. Gatsby and Daisy get closer until the end when Gatsby is contemplating

In the book the character Nick comes from a poor family. He leaves them to go make money as a bond man. He doesn’t get into much trouble and has only been drunk twice in his life. In the movie he is an alcoholic ever since his summer with Gatsby. He is portrayed to have no self control and parties all the time. His love interest with Jordan Baker is also cut out of the entire movie.Daisy in the book is a girl known for loving the materialistic part of guys. Daisy is a shallow girl who only likes guys for their money, she is in Gatsby’s house and starts crying because she had never seen such beautiful shirts. She is sad she doesn’t have Gatsby’s wealth and doesn’t want to miss her opportunity on it. In the movie, Daisy is seen as weak and needy, she also is more romantic with Gatsby. She is less shallow, when her and Gatsby are in his home, she cries over how beautiful the shirts are, however Nick tells the audience that her real reason was because of the time she has missed with Gatsby.. In the book Tom Book is a jerk, he consistently is making racist and sexist comments causing those around him to dislike him. Although he is a bad guy, he does not tell Wilson that Gatsby is the reason his wife Myrle is dead after hitting him with his car. In the movie Tom is still a jerk, but the racist and sexist jokes were removed because they are considered not socially acceptable in today’s time period. To make up for

It is assumed because he is the narrator of the story. In the film, we see that it is in fact Nick who is “writing” the story. After the events of his summer with Gatsby, he had checked himself into a sanitarium and is diagnosed as a “morbid alcoholic”. He describes his summer with Gatsby to a doctor, who is using a typewriter to type Nick’s story. The audience is shown this concept in the beginning of the film. Throughout the film, Luhrmann goes forward in time to when Nick is writing his story to remind the audience that it is him who is writing it. In the text, the readers are left with the final line of “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” (Fitzgerald pg. 180). However in the film adaptation, the last scene is Nick adding “The Great” to the title of his book which is originally just called “Gatsby”.
The film does a good job at explaining the story even though there are events that happen in the text, but not on the screen. In the book, Nick is hanging out with Tom, Myrtle, and Myrtle’s sister but ends up leaving the party with Mr. McKee. When they step into the elevator, the operator asks Mr. McKee to not touch the lever and this brings out some homoerotic tension between the two. We then find Nick in his underwear besides Mr. Mckee’s bed as he shows Nick his photographs. The film drops this scene completely and instead has Nick hooking up with Myrtle’s