Close Reading ' The Great Gatsby'

by TheEquestrian                                                                       

                                    “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”

                                                - The Great Gatsby

Right now, in my free time I am reading "The Great Gatsby" By F. Scott Fitzgerald. I have heard great things about the movie (mainly about the soundtrack). I decided I would give it a try, blinded I went to the local library and checked it out. Not knowing what it was about or anything, I opened it and began to read.

At first it was very challenging, but me being stubborn I refused to put it down. So I continued to read. The language of Fitzgerald is challenging, and it is mysterious. But it keeps you reading. The book is written from the perspective of Nick: A handsome man who has been in the war, and was getting tired of his normal life in the mid-west. So he moves out east, to a little place called the West Egg (Near New York). While Nick is living out east, you get to know the characters, but there is one character that keeps you wondering. The phantom Gatsby is someone that you want to know. He is someone you just can't figure out. Nick and the reader begin to hear all these crazy rumors about Gatsby. No body seems to even know who is, or what he is like. All they know is that he throws parties every weekend, and they are suppose to be this huge thing. Everyone wants to be there. You want to figure out who he is, and what his past is. As the story goes on you get to know Gatsby and Nick and the people who surround him in a different light.

By the end of this story, I had experienced ALL the emotions. It brings you up and crushes you; it brings you to yell at the book like a football game. It makes you look at your life and the relationships you have and the depth are absence of depth that they have. By the time I reached page 180, I cried. I didn’t think it was fair that it was over. I am the kind of person that wants everything to be perfect, and to be okay; I don’t like the feeling of things being incomplete. This book stretched me in everyway possible. I learned that things wouldn’t always be okay. That things happen and sometimes you have to let them run there course, even if you want so bad to nudge them on the path that you think it should go. But things don’t work like that. Not everything is perfect…

“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”