F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby

This is my second time through The Great Gatsby. This time, I was reading to annotate it so that I'm ready to teach it. I really enjoy this book!

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is an American classic set in 1922 at the height of the Roaring 20s. Nick Carraway is new in New York City. He moves into a dumpy house next to this gorgeous mansion owned by one Jay Gatsby. Across the bay, in the upper-class East Egg lives the Buchanans, a distant cousin of Nick Carraway. Tom and Daisy Buchanan are "old money," while Gatsby is "new money," with no one actually really knowing where he got all of his cash. Gatsby and Daisy dated for a time before he went to Europe to fight in WWI. While he was gone, Daisy married Tom, and Gatsby is trying to win her back. He throws elaborate parties at his mansion in an attempt to impress her. Will he win her back and get the happily-ever-after he wishes, erasing the past few years?

I love The Great Gatsby. Maybe that's the English teacher in me talking. I'm so delighted by how despicable all of the characters are. Daisy is dumb. Jordan is dishonest. Tom is a philanderer with a double standard (and racist to boot). Nick and Gatsby are really the only likable characters - and even they have their flaws. Gatsby is so stuck in the short time he dated Daisy that he can't see that her future has changed. Not only that, but he's obsessed with her wealth. It's hard to know if he loves her, or the fact that she comes from "old," legitimate money. It's so enjoyable to watch students get to the end of the book and declare how much they hate Daisy for what happens.

This book is incredibly indicative of the upper-crust culture in the 1920s. People spent money like it grew on trees and ignored Prohibition as if it didn't exist. The ominous ending almost predicts the ominous ending to the era - the stock market crash in 1929. Fitzgerald of course had no way to know what would happen in 1925 when he published Gatsby, but he clearly could predict what the debauchery would get them.

The Great Gatsby is a fantastic book as long as you approach it with the appropriate cynicism toward the characters.

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