The Great Gatsby?

Was Gatsby great? I don’t know? He was an interesting man, but I think he had the wrong idea about life and how it was supposed to be. Money was always a huge factor within the story. Daisy only wanted Gatsby if he had money, Gatsby became rich so he could have daisy etc. it was all just a bad way to live life thinking about money and that’s what I think the intention of the book was. Money determined who the associated with, what their house looked like, and what things they had, but it all came at a greater cost; a life was lost, friends were lost, people lost who they really were.

For this book how I annotated it was looking at the style, tone, etc. When looking at his style I liked it. Fitzgerald made his writing easy to follow. A reader could tell if a character was important or not if Fitzgerald gave more of a background to who the person was. If he introduced some one with just a quick little sentence or two about them it was obvious that they weren’t too important. Sometimes his style was a little jumpy too; he would be on one subject then just change all of sudden. That jumpy style is quite strange and I found my self re-reading a little. Fitzgerald also kind of left little hints along the way to what was going to happen next. They were small things that if I read carefully would catch. For example, that green light, when the reader finds out it’s at Daisy’s house and Gatsby is always starring across the lake it makes it pretty clear he has a thing for Daisy, and the symbol is he is always lingering for her in the distance. On to the tone, his tone was usually pretty clear when people with their noses up in the air it was pretty clear they had that I’m-better-than-you tone (which a lot of people had in this book). Then, when Gatsby was nervous about seeing Daisy it was clear with the awkward statements and stuttering. The annotating for this book was overall pretty easy.

On to the characters…The one character I liked was Nick. Nick was the only real character that didn’t try to be something he wasn’t or let money run his life. Nick was a little confusing sometimes because I didn’t under stand why he would hang with Gatsby, but never really liked him, and it was the same with Tom it said that they went to school together and were friends, but it never seemed like he liked Tom. He just seemed like he was always dragged into the crazy antics that went on. Then Daisy, I didn’t like her character she seemed to just be fake, I knew she didn’t love Tom and she knew about the mistress, so I can only think she stayed with him for one thing− his money. I feel like she did love Gatsby at one time, but in the end, only used him and run away leaving Gatsby to deal with the consequences of her actions! I just don’t find her honorable at all and just an awful person all around. Then Tom he drove me crazy because it was all about the image to him, the cars the nice home, the wife, oh and of course a good mistress. He was arrogant and I wish someone would have put him in his place. I found it funny when he found out Daisy was having a relationship with Gatsby because the tables had turned and all of a sudden cheating on a spouse wasn’t fair to him. The money just made him full of himself, and it was pretty annoying. Finally, Gatsby, his character interested me in the beginning because he was so mysterious and really seemed to be this great and interesting person, but then once Daisy came around he changed and wasn’t an honorable man. I feel like Gatsby got caught up in doing whatever it took to get Daisy, and in the process of stealing her from Tom he lost himself, which was sad and ultimately cost him his life. In the end it was interesting to see all the characters develop, but it kind of stunk when most the characters turned out to be losers.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked the book in the end, and found it interesting, but it just ended weird with all the characters who didn’t value life instead of money screwing their life up and those who did value life (Nick) just moved on? I just don’t know what it was about the ending… it just almost seemed like something was missing something wasn’t complete? So, in the end, was Gatsby great… and I have to say no, he may have lived a great extravagant lifestyle, but no I don’t think he himself was great at all because only the great value life and don’t lose themselves to money.