A Book Review: The Great Gatsby (1925), by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Most people know the story: Set in 1922, Nick Carraway, a young bond salesman who works on Wall Street, moves into a small house next to a huge mansion, owned by Jay Gatsby, on Long Island, along the north shore of Long Island Sound. Everyone suspected Gatsby of acquiring his wealth from illegal activities, possibly as a bootlegger. Gatsby tells various lies, half-truths, and misleading information about his background. Most people assume he is a liar, and most don’t care. However, as the non-judgmental Nick gets to know Gatsby, he seems able to ferret out what stories about Gatsby are probably true and which are probably false.
Jay Gatsby is in love with a woman, Daisy, who is married to Tom Buchanan. Tom and Daisy come from privileged backgrounds, and despite being married, have contempt for each other. We don’t know why they don’t divorce. I speculate it is because they married for reasons of money and class. Tom is having an affair with a woman named Myrtle Wilson, who is married to a poor, clueless man named George Wilson. George loves his wife dearly and doesn’t know she is having an affair. Myrtle has the utmost contempt for her husband, as does Tom.
The novel opens with:
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 anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in the world haven’t had the advantages that you had.”
…I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me…
A narrator shouldn’t need to emphasize to the reader that he is non-judgmental. However, this allowed Nick Carraway to ignore the rumors and assertions about Jay Gatsby and take him at face value. It allowed Fitzgerald to show the good and the bad of Gatsby. I suppose it also explains why Nick Carraway doesn’t judge the married Daisy, Nick’s cousin, for getting involved with Gatsby. Even still, that surprised me. On the other hand, Nick knows that Tom and Daisy despise each other, and after all, she is only his second cousin once removed, which makes it less personal for Nick. I suppose.
When F. Scott Fitzgerald neared completion of The Great Gatsby, he said: “I want to write something new–something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned.” Academics consider the book a work of genius, and if not the best, one of the best American novels. I am not that impressed, but the narrative is intricately patterned. I respect how the author provides information indirectly, forcing the reader to use their brain more. He inserts the reader into situations, then provides the necessary context and background information afterward, including using flashbacks. This keeps the reader wondering what’s happening, while teasing the reader onward.
Fitzgerald’s images, where he places them, and how he uses them, are excellent. His imagery is not quite up to the level of those in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, but she was a poet after all. Fitzgerald uses more abstraction and meta-language. Plath uses fewer adjectives and adverbs but more vivid verbs. In The Bell Jar, Plath begins scenes regularly, with no transition from what happened before and no context. Only afterward does she explain the context. I wonder if she learned this from Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald’s most blatant symbols are a bit corny and contrived.. The billboard advertisement with the famous, looming eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg and the dump full of ash heaps in Corona are a bit too obvious.
No one would describe the book as a page-turner. The gangsters in the book are nothing like the violent caricatures we see in fiction and movies today. Jay Gatsby seems well-mannered, cordial, and a nice guy. I love the picture of the Jazz Age–the Roaring Twenties. Jay Gatsby has parties almost every weekend, attended by hundreds. And despite Prohibition, the liquor flows freely–any kind of liquor you want, and no one questions how or where it came from.
In the big, philosophical picture, the novel is about pursuing the American dream. Gatsby had the money and all the materialistic trappings of success, but not the woman he loved. George Wilson had a business that did poorly, with a wife, Myrtle, whom he loved dearly. But Myrtle betrayed him. Nick Carraway, the narrator, represents a middle ground. He makes his money the old-fashioned way–he earns it. He lives within his means. He rarely drinks. His love interest is not another married woman but Jordan Baker, a flapper and professional golfer.
In the end, someone murders Jay Gatsby and George Wilson. But who shot Jay Gatsby? Ignore the movie adaptations–the moviemakers had to interpret, and the movies don’t necessarily present the same nuanced clues as the book.
Judging by the evidence in the novel, I conclude that Wilson must have shot Gatsby. He was out of his mind with loss and grief over the loss of Myrtle from the hit-and-run accident, and he thought Gatsby was the driver. But as to who shot Wilson, I suspect, with less certainty, that he turned the gun on himself. Without Myrtle, he has nothing and no one to live for.
Tom Buchanan had a suspected motive to shoot Gatsby and Wilson. Since Gatsby was pursuing Tom’s wife, at first, he seems to have had a motive to shoot Gatsby. However, given the state of their marriage, I don’t think Tom cared that his wife was having an affair. But Gatsby annoyed Tom greatly. As Tom was having an affair with Wilson’s wife, Tom Buchanan may have killed George Wilson to free Myrtle from him. However, I’m not sure he had to go that far. He may have shot Wilson out of contempt, but that is a stretch. Tom will resort to violence. At a party, he smacks Daisy in the face brutally, yet he does not seem like a killer. As an aside, little details like that show Fitzgerald’s genius. He knows readers will judge Tom, but he fleshes him out in a way that makes it harder to judge him.
It is possible, but I suspect far less probable, that the gangster Meyer Wolfsheim had Gatsby shot, for reasons related to their joint criminal activities, and whichever of Wolfsheim’s men shot Gatsby may have also shot Wilson, possibly because he was a witness to the Gatsby shooting.
Who do you think shot Jay Gatsby and George Wilson?