Happy 90th birthday Gatsby

[THE Bigzoman]

So it's the 90th birthday of the Great Gatsby and since alchoal prices exceed my willingness to pay I'm going to start a thread about the novel and gauge your guys opinions on the book and me analysis.

Here's the two things I learned about the book after reading it again a year in a half ago.

1. Never put the poon a pedestal. No, seriously, Daisy wasn't shit an Gatsby romantizing their relationship to that degree made him ungrateful to the fact that he was living the life and deserved better. Also, this was also his downfall in the end because that chick played games and didn't know what she wanted.

2. The last paragraph really rung with me. It sums the entire novel up. I don't think High school teens get it unless they read it again when they are a young adult. I'm inclined to say that this part alone makes the novel more directed to adults than teens:


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—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” (Fitzgerald, 189)

You don't understand its true context until you pour your heart for someone-or something only to fall up short; the only thing left behind is the person you were before you decided to pursue said thing. You're left empty and helpless until the green light reappears or manifests itself in a different form. Reinvigorated and armed with new resolve, you chase after it again, fighting back the forces and inclinations that were responsible for your previous failures (boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past)

Really hit me in the feels.


So, 3 questions.

1. Have you read it?
2. What did you like and learn about the novel?
3. What do you think of my interpretations?

[Calfredd]

Read it in high school so really can't remember it too well so yeah...

Nitpick, switch questions 1 and 2 because they don't make sense in that order.

[Issalice]

Read it, loved it. Although it has been awhile. I really remember it being very romantic. I'm going to have to dig it out and read it again, I'm assuming my teen idealistic nature got the best of me and took it in the best possible of ways.

[THE Bigzoman]

Read it, loved it. Although it has been awhile. I really remember it being very romantic. I'm going to have to dig it out and read it again, I'm assuming my teen idealistic nature got the best of me and took it in the best possible of ways.

Do it. Your teenage view of the world distorted it's message-It blocked it out because it didn't like what it was seeing.

I was literally shouting at Gatsby.

You're rich. You're throwng extravagant parties. You're loved by most.

WHY?! Why throw it all away for some girl. You could've gotten better Gatsby! You deserved better!

[PC2]

Yes I read it.

I learned that money can buy you love and happiness.

[mvaliz]

The green light is unobtainable... Gatsby had everything and then lost it cus he wanted more. The Girl, the House, the life... he had that - but he wanted more. He wanted perfection... all he had to be was content with what he had in his life instead of pushing Daisy to tell the other guy she never loved him.

The point was Gatsby (indeed, the entire cast) was never content with what they had... and in the end it destroys them. Which is why the main character (forget his name) ended up in the mental ward as he gave up on all humanity.

Don't know why they ever changed that in the Movie to have him "respect" Gatsby... he actually hated everybody, including gatsby, for their greed.

[THE Bigzoman]

The green light is unobtainable... Gatsby had everything and then lost it cus he wanted more. The Girl, the House, the life... he had that - but he wanted more. He wanted perfection... all he had to be was content with what he had in his life instead of pushing Daisy to tell the other guy she never loved him.

The point was Gatsby (indeed, the entire cast) was never content with what they had... and in the end it destroys them. Which is why the main character (forget his name) ended up in the mental ward as he gave up on all humanity.

Don't know why they ever changed that in the Movie to have him "respect" Gatsby... he actually hated everybody, including gatsby, for their greed.

When did Nick Carraway end up in a mental ward? Last you hear of him he detests New York and the people and goes back to Minnesota.

[Mercadi]

Not a book I liked. Whoever thinks it's good probably doesn't read outside of what they have to for high school assignments.

[Deleted]

not enough killings for my liking

[Deleted]

Read it. Might be that the language was a tad advanced for a Swedish 19 year-old but I remember it as kind of dull. Might reread it sometime though.

[Independent voter]

We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. There was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.

===========

"Tom Buchanan is such a control freak, he sucks the life out of everything," is how I would've wrote that.

[Nadiru]

Ugh, it's like reading MySpace before there was MySpace.

[Mormolyce]

One of many books that shouldn't be taught in English classes because you have to be an adult to understand it.

[Fencers]

1. Have you read it?
2. What did you like and learn about the novel?
3. What do you think of my interpretations?

1. Of course...
2. I loved the usage of language. In particular the tempo in which it was written somewhere between sleep and being dead tired after a long night of partying. Often the novel is said to be written for the Jazz Age, and it was, but I think Fitzgerald was more accurately writing about the come-down of the jazz age.
3. I didn't read it. Unnecessary.

[Deleted]

One of many books that shouldn't be taught in English classes because you have to be an adult to understand it.

Its healthy for children to hear and speak about adult matters I've heared.

Anyway, whats the Great Gatsby and whats wrong with Harry Potter?