The Great Gatsby Book Review

The Great Gatsby – a Great read

Book review written by Irma Kahrimanovic

The novel The Great Gatsby, published in 1925 by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald tells the story of the rich society in America during the 1920s. This book is a modernist novel that goes under the genre "social commentary". This brilliant novel follows several characters living in the fictional towns of West Egg and East Egg on Long Island, primarily the millionaire Jay Gatsby, his former lover Daisy Buchanan and their friends and family. The novel, narrated by Gatsby’s neighbour Nick Carraway, explores themes of love, society, class and wealth, creating a vivid and intriguing portrait of the Roaring Twenties during Americas Jazz Age, making this one of the best

The plot thickens on every page, making this book a page-turner that never failed to entertain me. This novel was written during the Jazz Age of America and highlights the behaviour that went on during this period. The protagonist, Jay Gatsby, throws lavish parties filled with alcohol and other behaviours that were considered immoral at the time. This is something I found intriguing about the novel. The novel is not only a fictional story, but also gives me an insight on how the society was in the United States during the Prohibition. Fitzgerald writes about the profession of being a bootlegger, a person who sold and transported alcohol illegally, which is a historical representation of the Prohibition. He also writes about how the people during this time spent money liberally, because of the great post-war economic growth, giving me an understanding of the lavish lifestyles. Knowing how the upper-class American society was during the Jazz Age helped me better understand the characters, because I could put their actions into perspective considering the morals were different during this time.

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald touches on a variety of themes – everything from love to power and greed, making it a book that constantly shows new sides to itself. Nevertheless, of all the themes he discusses, perhaps the most prominent one is the theme of different social classes during this period,

Fitzgerald paints a picture of the characters and surroundings vividly. This helps me as a reader imagine how the characters look as well as the environment they are in, which in result also makes the story more realistic. With his detailed depictions, the author made me feel like I was a part of the setting. Fitzgerald establishes early in the novel how Nick Carraway’s house looks, which gives me as a reader a visualization on how West Egg looks. Carraway narrates that his house was on the “less fashionable of the two”, referring to West and East Egg. The house on his right “was a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin bread of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden”(p.11). This description gave me an understanding of how the neighbourhood looked like on West Egg. Nick writes that West Egg was less fashionable than East Egg, giving me an idea that the East part of Long Island had to be even more luxurious, also establishing what kind of people live on the two Eggs.

Symbolism is something that is used throughout the book. In The Great Gatsby, even cities symbolize something deeper. The Valley of Ashes, where the lower class lived, represents the lack of morality and corruption that comes with the pursuit and indulgence of materialism and money, which the people of the Jazz Age did. The usage of symbols