Vintage Tales discussion

I find it very interesting how many of us have different views on The Great Gatsby. Some hate it, some love it, some found it 'okay'.

What made you have your feelings on it? Was it the characters? The plot? The setting?

My poor Gatsby. I think I love him more for all his ridiculous behavior. I just liked the story. It's simple but it can be interpreted in so many different ways. And let us not forget my favorite part http://threepanelbookreview.tumblr.co...

I love this book, there is so much in such a short book. For me this was a look at the great American dream (the 1940's version of the great american dream as there is another; see Revolutionary Road). Easy money, parties and a life of leisure and more parties. Sound fun? Maybe but what you are really seeing in this book is flawed characters that only care about themselves and what they want. This leads to so many problems

I have to agree with Michael. It was an interesting look at how that dream (the money and the houses and the parties) couldn't make up for the flaws and it didn't make their lives any happier, really. I almost see Tom and Daisy as children when I see how careless and selfish they really are. Fitzgerald said it perfectly: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

If you are interested; John Green has done a great crash course on what is going on in this novel.

Part 1- http://youtu.be/xw9Au9OoN88
Part 2- http://youtu.be/cn0WZ8-0Z1Y

I just thought the book was boring and didn't like it because I did a book report on it in high school where I got a C on it to pass Senior English and they made us read it my junior year of high school and watch the original movie on it and I didn't enjoy it. I guess I wasn't into the flappers era and didn't care about the characters.

I first off want to say that I enjoyed the writing. Fizgerald is a good writer. His extended metaphors of Doctor T J Eckleburg (which I loved!) and the green light on Daisy's harbour were beautiful.

I think my main problem was that I didn't like any of the characters. Gatsby was just frustrating, Daisy way too emotional (THE SHIRTS!), Myrtle hideously up herself, Tom a complete brute. The only character I marginally liked was Jordan. I think if it had been, say, 100 pages longer, there could have been a good enough plot twist and plot development to make it a good story. To me, it was too open and shut. There was no twist, no tension, and I found the deaths slightly anti-climatic.

I don't know, perhaps my views on it will change. I just found it clearly lacking in something.

I don't regret studying it though. It was amusing debating with my whole class. And we found this t-shirt, which I really want to get my English Lit teacher when we leave:

I think you will run into serious problems as a Lit student if you are judging a book by the likeability of the characters. None of the characters are meant to be likeable.

No offence but I feel like that is a habit you'll need to break, you'll miss out on some much beauty in novels if you are too busy hating characters. Good example of this is Lolita, most of the negative reviews of the book probably mention hating the main character.

I understand your point, but I guess I worded it wrong. Its not a personal dislike for them. It's more that nothing stands out to me as making them significant characters. Lolita's narrator clearly has issues with loving a 12/13 year old girl and that in itself, and his whole mindset makes him a remarkable character to read about.

It's not so much that I dislike them. I just can't find anything significant in them to give me emotions other than a frustrated flippancy towards them. If I were to dislike a character, I would have strong emotions about my dislike. The characters in Gatsby I find to be too lacking to be interesting to read about.

Personally I think that was deliberate. I thought that F. Scott Fitzgerald made most of characters unimpressive, unmemorable and almost interchangeable as a way to show if everyone tries to be the same no one is unique or interesting.

See this is why I love this book so much, I love books that spark huge debates and conversations about the symbolism, themes, motifs, etc

That is a very good point. Perhaps Fitzgerald did it on purpose. You have the big hype and rumours about Gatsby, when really nothing is remarkable about him. You have Tom; a fallen college jock now far less important. Ultimately, is Fitzgerald suggesting that regardless of everything, we're all human? And therefore we all have our faults and our failures and our simplicities?

I must admit, part of me doesn't dislike it because it causes so much debate. I think, regardless of how much you dislike a book, if it causes discussions, it has to have some level of goodness to create such discussions.

This is one of those books I have on a pile to reread. I call this pile my "To Reread Once I'm Better at Literary Criticism". So many books I just want to pick apart and look at with a deeper knowledge of literary theories.

I also think the fact that the characters really are just unimpressive was intentional. Everyone looks up at these people who are at the top of fashionable society, and what are they and what do they really have? They certainly don't seem to be any happier just because they're rich and have achieved the status that millions of other people were working toward. They might be more careless and free to do as they please, but they're certainly not happier when you look past the new dresses and fancy parties. Poor Gatsby devoted his life to working towards this dream and they didn't think twice about stepping over him to get to the next party or house or whatever where they might find some temporary distraction from underlying problems.

You make a good point Lissa; I forgot about the idolisation going on in the book.

I really need to read it again. It's been a couple of years and normally I interpret it differently every time I read it. I took a literary criticism class not long ago, so I'm willing to bet I'd see it in a different light if I were to pick it up right now.

Holly wrote: "I first off want to say that I enjoyed the writing. Fizgerald is a good writer. His extended metaphors of Doctor T J Eckleburg (which I loved!) and the green light on Daisy's harbour were beautiful..."

Beautiful shirts!! I like the shirt. I have one from litographs.com that has the entire book printed on it. I love it, but people like to stop me and say, "Let me read your shirt... Hold on... Hold on... GATSBY??? Where's chapter 7?!" Ugh... I guess I'm asking for it by wearing it, but ugh.

I really liked the Great Gatsby. Perhaps because I'm obsessed with the Roaring Twenties :D I've read two books by Fitzgerald so far: The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise. The latter I liked. I didn't think it was wonderful, but I enjoyed it. But I really think the Great Gatsby is good. It's well written; the characters are well described, as well as their feelings; ... It's not my favourite book, but I really like it :D

I think I was in some ways lucky to find Gatsby for the first time as a 47 year old first time classic reader. It wasn't my first classic that was 'To kill a Mockingbird' and there my passion for classic lit was ignited.
Maybe because I didn't have it rammed at me as a teen or a young adult I accepted it for what it was, a beautifully written and descriptive book of the time of the last century that Fitzgerald was so much a part of 'The Jazz age' It was opulent to the extreme and there was no hope for any of the characters to have a 'character' they were wealthy,spoilt,debauched,and totally detestable. But I think Gatsby was enigmatic because he was different. He loved Daisy he never stoped loving her and circumstance (finances) he thought kept them apart. For me it is basically a love story and so elegantly written I could not help but love it.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Tracey wrote: "I think I was in some ways lucky to find Gatsby for the first time as a 47 year old first time classic reader. It wasn't my first classic that was 'To kill a Mockingbird' and there my passion for c..."

I think I can say I agree. I liked the book the first time I read it - as a teenager - for the raving love story, in University for how it was written and this year when I last read it for the "cyclopic" passion that Gatsby keeps alive nothwistanding everything. I found him similar to Achab in Moby Dick for that ...

I think a lot of people who say they hate it do so because they've had to study it somewhere down the line at school/sixth form/ university. I hated it the first time I read it. But when you step back and see it for the love story it really is then I think people will enjoy it more. I certainly liked it a lot more second (and third!) time around.

Hi Rachel, read it last year again for a GR read and was left feeling empty (again). With such shallow characters (especially Daisy), I wasn't drawn in. I know many people disagree with that, you have your rabid supporters, but for me, it just missed. For a love story, you need two parties. To me, Daisy was more in love with the idea than the man.

Hullo! But similarly Americans are in love with their dreams than having it in reality which is what daisy is all about. She won't actually leave tom, but she is in love with the idea if having her Gatsby back.

I saw the words "Gatsby" and "debate" in the same sentence and I had to write. I for one did enjoy The Great Gatsby. Of course there were points at first I thought didn't like for one thing a majority of the characters' personalities for one thing in which I believe Holly mentioned before. Yet I think now that's there personalities are there flaws in a way, what's the final nail in the coffin for them. They all had there issues some more emphasized than others but every character ( Jordan, Nick, Tom, Gatsby, Daisy, Myrtle and her husband included) personalities were there demise in a way. Along with metaphors, symbolism, questionable homosexual behavior, a love story, murder and a story of social classes what else could you ask for in a book.

I did this book for the first year of my Eng Lit A-level. The book did not really hit me where it matters. I was pretty much the only person in my class who didn't like it. I don't even know why, there's just something that puts me off. I think it's because I think Gatsby is pathetic rather then romantic like most people do. Having said that, I think the descriptions Nick uses are just fabulous.

Oh, what a brilliantly ridiculous book. I simply hated/adored it.

Elsewhere ... in a separate thread, I posted this short pithy review by the late Dick Dabney about Gatsby: "Hauntingly beautiful, solidly true, and more than likely despised because of its inclusion in lit courses taught by profs Gatsby would have murdered. The movie, too, was good, and almost universally panned; which causes one to suspect that there’s something in Gatsby most of us don’t want to know:" I agreed with these words when I read them more than 30 years ago ... I don't think that I've changed my opinion about Gatsby much since. When Dabney wrote those words, he was referencing the movie with Robert Redford, which I have to confess that I also liked a lot.