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The Great Gatsby Book Review

The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is considered to be one of the best books ever written, but I personally find it highly overrated.

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“So we beat on,

boats against the current,

borne back ceaselessly into the past“

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It is set in 1920s New York City and it follows a mysterious titular millionaire, his lavish lifestyle and his obsession with a girl named Daisy. The storytelling here is very uninvolving, at least it was to me. The novel is written in such a way that it has too much dialogue, not enough memorable descriptions and it’s too concerned with entangled relationships between its many characters, feeling very much like a soap opera in the process.

The characters are probably my main issue with this book. I did not care about any of these people, and I know that they are supposed to be horrible, but still I rarely witnessed any humanity in any of them, thus resulting in a work that is so devoid of emotion that it felt too cold and distant.

Nick Carraway is only a protagonist in regards to him relating this story to us as the narrator, but otherwise he is so unimportant and really very poorly developed. Jay Gatsby himself is memorable for sure and the book’s treatment of him as this mysterious, even mystical man that represents richness and luxuriousness was very striking.

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Daisy Buchanan is just this debutante socialite who is pretty and that’s pretty much it. I never saw why any of these people were so obsessed with her. Among the female characters, much more interesting is Myrtle who is a tragic figure. She is torn between two men, she yearns for a better life and her death is the only thing in the book that felt emotional to me. Tom as this racist and sexist archetype is also quite memorable with his hatred being well explored.

So yes, this book actually develops the supporting characters better than the leads, which was both interesting and annoyingly problematic. The book explores just how unattainable the so-called American Dream can be and how dangerous it is to pursue it. It also explores failed relationships, the class system of the twenties, the aristocracy, both old and new, and in particular how shallow, plain and conceited the rich, are and how dangerous their overly indulgent lifestyles turn out to be.

Thus, The Great Gatsby is thematically rich obviously, but this thematic evaluation is in practice much more interesting to read and analyze afterward than it is as a reading experience, which is why the book is a failure as it never involved me as a reader. Rather, it annoyed me with overly repetitious dialogue and a bigger emphasis on romances and soapy elements instead of focusing more on US society of the twenties.

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I do not like Fitzgerald’s style of writing personally. I find it monotonous, overly simplistic and not artistic enough. The novel is detailed in its depiction of the twenties time period – the flappers, the aristocracy, the lavishness etc. – but ultimately I wasn’t too engaged despite me loving this particular time period, which says a lot of its hollow and overly monotonous tone. It’s thus a book that I admire for its themes, but I did not care about whatsoever while reading it.

The Great Gatsby is an overrated literary work that does deal with some great themes, it depicts its time period solidly and some characters are well developed, but most aren’t, and the book is overly cold and distant in its approach, thus making it difficult to get emotionally invested in. Even more problematic is its emphasis on monotonous dialogue and soapy elements such as romances and love triangles. Consequently, it is much more interesting to read about afterward than it is while reading it at first.