The Great Gatsby Jack Apple

Title of Book:The Great Gatsby Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald # of Pages 154  Star Rating: ☆☆☆☆Why This Book has Value:

The book starts out with introducing us to Nick Carraway who is also the narrator.  Nick is from Minnesota (which F. Scott Fitzgerald is also from) and has moved to New York in 1922.  He moves to West Egg area of  Long Island which is very wealthy.  The people who live here have acquired their money fairly recently and are seen as the new rich. Nicks next door neighbor is a man called Jay Gatsby who lives in a huge mansion and throws lavish and crazy parties every Saturday night.  Nick is not like all his other neighbors as he has gone to Yale and is from old money.  He drives over to East Egg one night to have dinner with his cousin and her husband Tom.  His cousins name is Daisy Buchanan.  We are then introduced to the beautiful Jordan Baker and she begins a romance with Nick.   Tom is having an extramarital affair with a lady called Myrtle.  They are at a party and she teases Tom about his wife Daisy, and he breaks her nose.  As the summer moves along Nick gets an invatation  to attend one of Gatsby' s legendary parties and he learns that Gatsby was in love with his cousin Daisy 5 years previously in Louisville.  He is still madly in love with her!!  He has purchased the house across the bay from her  in the hopes of rekindling their romance even though she is married to Tom.   Gatsby persuades Nick to set up a meeting without her prior knowledge and they rekindle their old romance.  Shortly after Toms suspicions about his wife and Gatsby are proved right when he sees how Gatsby looks at Daisy across a room.  He confronts Gatsby with this and is very angry even though he is having an affair with Myrtle.  Next there is a car crash where Gatsby''s car runs over Myrtle and kills her.  Nick later finds out from Gatsby that Daisy was driving at the time.  I do not want to give away the ending but Myrtles husband is not happy.....The setting of this book is by the ocean on Long Island, I find this interesting as F. Scott Fitzgerald spent a lot of his time by the ocean and vacationed often in the French Riveria with his wife.  The time was the jazz age in the 1920's and there is a lot of illegal booze and lavish parties.  Gatsby has made his money from being an illegal bootlegger but does not seem to enjoy his wealth.  He neither drinks nor swims in his pool at his elegant estate.  I think this book has many values to a reader as we can all relate in wanting things that we cannot have and lying and being underhanded.  I found I did not really like many of the characters with their snobby and sometimes languid ways.  The green light at the end of Daisy's dock is seen as an 'enchanted object".  I think we can all see some of Daisy's characteristics in people around us like her lack of empathy and her inability to make choices.   There are a lot of themes running through this book: society and classes, education, lies, affairs and forgiveness all show up.  The color Yellow also shows up  a lot in this book.  Yellow is the color of Gold and Gold is a symbol of wealth.  The plot thickens at the end and a violent act occurs.  I enjoyed this novel and its characters and may reread it in the future!