The Invisible Mentor

Booked for Mentoring: Review – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

July 12th, 2011 |

Image via Wikipedia

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is about what life was like for the rich in the early 1920s in the US. It took me a while to get into The Great Gatsby, and I wondered who the protagonist was, whether it was the narrator, Nick Carraway or Jay Gtasby. It also took some time for Gatsby to appear in the short novel – 172 pages. I also found myself asking if many of the books that are now considered classics, would occupy such a place had they been written today.

The Great Gatsby is told through the eyes of Yale graduate Nick Carraway, Gatsby’s neighbour. After participating in World War I, Nick Carraway moved from the Midwest to New York to learn the bond business. His father decided to finance him for a year. Carraway rented a small house – squished between two large houses that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season – in the West Egg section of Long Island Sound. Across the bay was the more affluent East Egg where Carraway’s second cousin Daisy and her husband multimillionaire Tom Buchanan lived.

Shortly after renting the house in Long Island, Carraway visits Daisy and Tom Buchanan at their home in East Egg. Buchanan is very self-centered and proud of his wealth, showing Carraway the expansiveness of his estate (Carraway is also from a prominent and well-to-do family in the Midwest). While visiting them, he meets professional golf player Jordan Baker, and also learns that Buchanan is cheating on Daisy. His girlfriend, the wife of car repairman George B. Wilson is extremely bold and sometimes calls Tom and Daisy’s residence to speak to him.

Carraway has seen his neighbour Jay Gatsby only a few times, and only from a distance. There is an aura of mystery surrounding Gatsby who has numerous parties that everyone wants to attend, and take advantage of his hospitality. People show up without invitations because they are curious about him and what he does. There is much speculation that he is a German spy, or has killed people, or from a royal family in Europe, but no one knows for sure. Many people who attend the parties at Gatsby’s house do not even know what he looks like.

Carraway gets an invitation to one of the parties. After he arrives at the party he is feeling somewhat out of his element because he doesn’t know anyone. Fortunately he spots Jordan Baker and joins her group. The speculations continue and Carraway wants to meet his host. He finally does, they have a chat, and Gatsby tells him what people say about who he is. He tells Carraway the “truth” about who he is. But the reality is that Gatsby invented his persona. Over the summer they form a friendship.

It turns out that Gatsby was acquainted with Daisy five years before, and she married Tom primarily because of his wealth and to a lesser extent because Gatsby had to return to Europe for a time. Gatsby asks Carraway to invite Daisy for tea – he wants to re-establish the friendship and the story really takes off. When Daisy sees Gatsby’s possession and his wealth she is impressed and they start to spend a lot of time together.

Buchanan finds out about Gatsby and is not very happy, it’s okay for him to have an affair, but that behaviour does not apply for his wife. He hires an investigator to find out about who Gatsby is and what he really does for a living. One day Gatsby and Carraway visit the Buchanans in the East Egg and things start to unravel.

Daisy constantly complained that it was too hot and they should go out for a drive: Jordan, Tom, Jay and herself. They took two cars ended up getting a room at a hotel in the city. Tom confronts Gatsby and talks about the results of his quick investigation. Carraway is surprised by what he hears and Daisy is bewildered. There is a lot of back and forth going on between Buchanan and Gatsby. Gatsby believes that Daisy never loved Buchanan whom she only married because of his wealth, but Tom says otherwise. As the narrator, Carraway can see that the relationship between Daisy and Gatsby was over a while ago. It’s often very difficult to recover what’s lost.

Under tremendous stress, Daisy wants to go back home and leaves with Gatsby because they had driven over together. She decides to drive, and ends up accidentally killing her husband’s girlfriend who ran out into the street. Gatsby wants her to stop and wait for police officers but she flees the scene. Shortly after when the rest of the party are passing by, they see a crowd gathered so Buchanan stops the car and learns that his girlfriend was dead. A witness saw the yellow car and Buchanan realizes that it was Gatsby’s car. He whispers something into the distraught Wilson’s ears.

Carraway discovers that Daisy was driving and not Gatsby. The vengeful Wilson kills Gatsby and then himself. Tom and Daisy Buchanan take off like a thief in the night. When Gatsby died, all his friends, acquaintances and associates disappear. Except for Gatsby’s father and Carraway, no one shows for the funeral, and one other person went to the cemetery.

Much later, Carraway bumps into Tom Buchanan who behaves like nothing happened. Carraway confronts him and but Buchanan feels justified in what he did to Gatsby even when he learns that Gatsby wasn’t the one who killed his girlfriend.

Nick Carraway got his fill of living in the East and returns to the Midwest. The Great Gatsby is very well written, but it’s a sad story. Why would anyone want to be in a relationship with someone who rejected them because they were poor? We all need deep-rooted friendships in our lives. Except for Carraway, it turns out Gatsby didn’t have any real friends, they were there to take what he had to offer – there was an illusion of friendship.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is worth a read, but I’m not convinced that it’s a timeless classic. If you’re looking for a light read for the summer, this isn’t it. But then again, if you are better at distancing yourself from a story, unlike me who immerses herself into the storty, it might be okay for you.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book links are affiliate links.