The Great Gatsby
“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”Remember when I posted that I had bought 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald? Well, I finished it last time (actually I finished it at 2 in the morning).
— Nick Caraway, The Great Gatsby
I honestly thought, before I finished the novella, that 'The Great Gatsby' would be about this guy named Gatsby who was this wonderful business man who did some sort of illegal business to get to this high position. Mind you, but I actually saw the trailer first, and I'm not American - so the Curriculum council didn't tell us to read this as it doesn't apply to our country, which is really a shame as I would have loved to read 'The Great Gatsby' instead of 'Of Mice and Men' as we did last year. They're both great books by the way, I just love The Great Gatsby more because it has romance in it!
Anyways, I thought the novel would just be about Nick Carraway meeting Jay Gatsby and it's set in the Roaring Twenties and it tells us all about how life was back then. I thought that it would be about this mysterious businessman named Gatsby and how the government and police uncover his illegal drug/alcohol business underground and he gets arrested and stuff for it and he's damn rich and holds parties while selling his drugs to people at the party. It would also be about a Jay Gatsby affair with Daisy Buchanan and how they would end up together (sort of like the Titanic). I thought Jay Gatsby would be this rich fellow who was wise, charismatic and just everything a rich person would be like. That's what I thought it was all about.
I think I understand what the novel is trying to portray and I think I understand why it didn't get so famous internationally until after the Great Depression and after F. Scott Fitzgerald's death. During the 1920's - the American dream was the main thing. It was the thing to achieve; it was the dream of the Americans and everyone was trying to achieve it - even during the Great Depression. The dream took over their lives, it literally consumed the Americans and Fitzgerald understood the corruption of the dream but others didn't at the time until much later on. I honestly believe this is such a wonderful book and everyone should read it too! I find it fascinating after I read 'Of Mice and Men' and then 'The Great Gatsby' as it completely shows how quickly Americans went from having luxury to absolutely nothing. Completely two different centuries - the 1920's and the 1930's.
I found this link to a Great Gatsby game by the way haha:
The Great Gatsby Game
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