So, today we’re going to talk about one of those novels that are considered by many to be up there among the best ever-written or, at least, one of the best books of the 20th century, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby: A party-filled decadent summer in Long Island. A novel of excess and, perhaps, a cautionary tale. Of course, when such bold claims are made, they are quickly countered by accusations of overrating. For many critics, The Great Gatsby is a masterpiece and the best novel by Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby receives a lot of attention in academia – I remember studying it in college more than once –, but it is also a popular novel, so popular that it has been adapted to film and television many times. But, before I go into the book, I want to talk a little bit about its author. Just a tiny bit. I’d like to include some biographical information in my reviews when I think it’s relevant to the book I am reviewing. And, in this case, I think talking about Fitzgerald’s life or, rather, his background is relevant because he poured a lot of his life into The Great Gatsby. So, Scott Fitzgerald was born to an American upper-middle-class family who then lost most of their wealth. He was born right at the end of the 19th century, in 1896. And that is key because being alive at a time of great change allowed Scott Fitzgerald to see how the United States became what they are still today: the global hegemonic super-power. America replaced Britain, which with its global empire had occupied that hegemonic place during the 19th century. Scott Fitzgerald became a famous and successful writer in the 1920s. And that decade is also key to understanding him as a writer and understanding the context for The Great Gatsby. The 1920s in America are referred to as the “roaring 20s”. We’re talking about jazz, we’re talking about flappers, you know, those girls who bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, smoked cigarettes, wore a lot of make-up, drove cars (cars are really important in The Great Gatsby, but no spoilers), … flappers also had a more casual approach to sex than women of previous generations. Of course, not all women (not even all young women) in the 1920s were flappers, but flappers made a big impact in early 20th-century culture in America and other Western nations. Fitzgerald is a young man at the time, and he portrays that moment in the culture in The Great Gatsby and in some of his other works. The novel depicts his generation’s freedom from the moral strictures that had dominated until very recently. His generation smashes a lot of taboos and lives life in a way that would’ve been completely alien to his parents’ generation. What I think makes The Great Gatsby so remarkable is that in it, Fitzgerald manages to portray the rise of America in all its contradictions. For someone who was as young as Fitzgerald was at the time (remember that The Great Gatsby was published in 1925) to not only realize what was going on around him but also portray it so masterfully with all its glorious contradictions is, at the very least, remarkable. Fitzgerald was already a famous writer who had published novels and short story collections, but I think The Great Gatsby was his biggest success. As I was saying, it is remarkable that Fitzgerald saw the contradictions of his time and poured them into a book. But, of course, that wouldn’t have been enough. What’s important is not the story itself, but how it is told. So, let’s look at that. Let’s look at how Scott Fitzgerald tells this story. Although The Great Gatsby is a first-person narrative, it is not told by Jay Gatsby but by a character named Nick Carraway. When I first read this novel many years ago, that was the first thing that surprised me about it. I don’t know maybe I was a naïve reader who hadn’t read much yet. Nick Carraway is Scott Fitzgerald or, at least, they do share some of the same characteristics. For example, their family backgrounds are similar: Nick, like Scott Fitzgerald, belongs to an upper-middle-class American family that had seen better days; both writer and narrator hail from the US Midwest, and they both have to move from that rural region to the center of the modern world that was New York City then to earn a living. Despite his background, Nick needs to work to make a living. Exactly like Scott Fitzgerald himself. So, Nick moves to New York to work in finance. The Great Gatsby portrays the run-up to the Wall Street Crash. We see American capitalism at its peak before it inevitably crashes down horribly, as it tends to do periodically. Nick is a bit of an outsider and I would say that his view on things is always moralistic. The Great Gatsby is about what it means to be American at a specific time in history. It is through the eyes of a moralistic character from the Midwest that we learn about the rise of Jay Gatsby, his love for the well-heeled Daisy Buchanan, who is portrayed as a flapper in the novel and who had married a millionaire while Gatsby was a soldier in the great war – World War One. But the world that Nick Carraway is a witness to is all about big parties in mansions, and easy money obtained using the financial market. So, Jay Gatsby personifies that world not only because he hosts many parties but also because nobody knows exactly how he made his fortune. Gatsby is a character surrounded by mystery. Is he a financial speculator, did he make his fortune as a smuggler during Prohibition? Nobody knows. If the novel were narrated by Gatsby, we would probably know all of that but then The Great Gatsby would be a lesser book, I think. Or even worse, if the story were told by an omniscient narrator (a narrator who knows everything), the story wouldn’t have the same impact. Instead, the narrator is Nick who happens to be as curious as us readers to find out who the mysterious Jay Gatsby is. I think what continues to fascinate readers is the mystery surrounding Jay Gatsby. Are we supposed to admire him, or despise him? Are we supposed to admire great financiers or are we supposed to despise them? That is a moral question that’s at the core of The Great Gatsby. But let’s go back to Jay Gatsby as a character. Gatsby’s rag to riches story is surrounded by mystery. Nobody knows how he became rich or who he was before. Nobody knows his real background. His rival, Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband, is also wealthy, but he has old money. Tom, unlike Gatsby, was born rich. That much we know. Okay, let’s talk about how not to read The Great Gatsby. Some readers see The Great Gatsby as a love story between Gatsby and Daisy, but I think the love story element is just the bait to hook readers. If you read The Great Gatsby superficially, and you can, you can indeed read it as a love story between a nouveau riche and a wealthy and attractive yet vacuous girl. But, thankfully, there is a lot more to the novel than that. Let us wider the lens, as it were. Every nation has myths. In America, there are two main myths, which are questioned every so often: the first myth is that of American exceptionalism, which is the idea that American history is different from that of every other nation on Earth; and the second myth is that of the American Dream. The American Dream is the belief that a series of ideals such as democracy, liberty, rights, and equality results in Americans having the opportunity to prosper and succeed. America is meant to be the land of opportunities and social mobility. The Great Gatsby questions both American exceptionalism and the American Dream. Okay, the American Dream is a lie, at least, partially. There is some opportunity of social mobility in the US, particularly, when compared with other parts of the world, including Europe in the 1920s where social classes were a lot more fixed than they were in the US. That explains the appeal America has had for European immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and for Asians and, most notably, Latin Americans later. But in America, there are large swathes of people, whole communities even, which are excluded from that “dream”, or for whom that “dream” was (and still is) a lot harder to achieve. Okay, I need to talk briefly about the plot of the novel, but I’m not going to spoil anything. I just want to set up the book and explain how The Great Gatsby questions the American Dream. So, Jay Gatsby starts life poor but he’s a self-made man who becomes a millionaire and buys himself a mansion in Long Island right across the bay from the place where the woman he loves lives with her husband; the woman who had left him to marry a millionaire. Everything that Gatsby does he does it for Daisy. He becomes wealthy, buys the mansion, etc. just to be near her…. As near her as he can manage, of course. Gatsby gives huge, extravagant parties in the hope that she would hear about him and maybe meet him again. Nick Carraway is Daisy’s second cousin and during the summer the novel takes place, he rents a house next door to Gatsby’s mansion. And that’s where I’ll stop with the plot. If you haven’t read the book, read it to find out what happens! I mean, if you have seen any of the movie adaptations, you’ll know the story and the ending by now, anyway. The last movie adaptation I think was quite successful. It was directed by Baz Luhrman and it starred Leonardo DiCaprio. I hated that adaptation, but I think I’ll always hate any movie or TV adaptation of The Great Gatsby because the best thing about the novel is not the story but how it is told in writing. And what you are going to get from a movie adaption is just the plot. Having said that, I’d be curious to watch an early version directed by Jack Clayton and starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. If you’ve seen it, let me know what you think in the comments section below. I’m curious. Money is at the center of the narrative. So much so that I wonder if money and not Daisy is Gatsby’s biggest love. I wonder if Daisy is just the personification of money and that’s why Gatsby who was born and grew up poor wants her so badly. Would Gatsby love Daisy if she were poor? What is so special about her other than being filthy rich? Daisy is as flat a character as I ever saw one. A flat character is one that is only defined by a handful of traits and who doesn’t evolve in the course of the narrative. And doesn’t that apply to Daisy perfectly? Also, Daisy cannot be a romantic heroine, because she is hollow. She is an empty character. There’s nothing to her. She is just rich and vacuous. Money is what makes her attractive. Money, finance, financial capital ruled in the 1920s. And money makes money, and attracts money. But let’s go back in time a little bit. The US had entered World War I in 1917 (the war had started in 1914) and it ended in 1918. The US had joined the allies and won the war, which had taken place mostly in Europe. So, the US economy benefited greatly from this military victory. Gatsby was a soldier and he personifies that US military and financial success. Well, leaving aside whether The Great Gatsby is a great novel or not, it is a classic. And it is a classic because it continues to speak to us. For all the period details in the narrative, the world it depicts resembles our world. It is easy for readers to see themselves in The Great Gatsby. We immediately recognize the characters and the world they inhabit. If there is something that perhaps seems strange to us is Daisy. She is a marginal character in the narrative, but that is the role that women of her social class largely occupied back them. So, I wouldn’t say Daisy is the creation of a sexist mind; I rather think that she is a reflection of a sexist society. And sure, sexism is not dead, but feminism has contributed to so many positive changes that Daisy seems to us now an excessively flat character. The Great Gatsby portrays the end of the Jazz era, the roaring twenties, that will end only four years after its publication with the Crash of Wall Street in 1929. I doubt that anyone watching this video was alive back then, but everyone will remember the financial crisis of 2007-2008. The world of the Great Gatsby is like that of the first half of that decade. One remarkable thing is that there is a sense of ominousness throughout the novel. It is as if Scott Fitzgerald already felt that all those excesses fostered by the financial bubble that benefited characters such as Nick or Gatsby himself was going to end up disastrously. The least important thing about The Great Gatsby is the “will they, won’t they” between Gatsby and Daisy. That’s just a red herring or rather bait to capture the reader’s attention and then tell a much more fascinating and important story. I recommend The Great Gatsby to anyone who hasn’t read it. I do think that everyone will get something out of it and most people would enjoy reading it. If you don’t own a copy, I’ve added links to different editions available with free worldwide delivery form the Book Depository. You’ll find those links in the description for this video. So, have you read The Great Gatsby? Let me know in the comments section. Also, if you enjoy my reviews, let me know if there is a book that you’d like me to review. I’d love to get requests from you. That’s all from me. I hope to see you again very soon. Take care. Bye for now!