The 88 year-old novel
"The Great Gatsby" was a great bore and an extremely overrated piece
of literature.
Fortunately the book was only
a 180 pages which still did not detour its torturous read, yielding a one star
rating. Bear in mind I have not seen any of “The Great Gatsby" movies
including the latest release starring Leonardo DiCaprio.F. Scott Fitzgerald's third 1925 novel "The Great Gatsby" harnessed all the elements for a superlative story about the roaring 20s, complete with excessive drinking, lavish parties, fornication, adultery, romance and crime.
F. Scott Fitzgerald managed to create two wild and sexy women and insert them into a chasm of nothingness. I'm referring to the two main women in the novel, Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker. Buchanan is married to Tom Buchanan and the Great Gatsby's love interest.
Daisy takes advantage of her youth and beauty by not staying faithful to her adulterous and white supremacist husband yet won't divorce him because of her catholic beliefs. Fitzgerald sets the stage for Daisy to blossom into an adventurous, alluring and riveting character and fails to open the curtain so to speak. Her athletically slender babe of friend, Jordan is equally amidst a delicious recipe for excitement and splendor, yet is never cooked.
Tom, Daisy's muscular husband and former football player from Yale complete with the 'cooler than thou' attitude still didn't set forth any malcontent or like for the guy, due the bad story writing.
The narrator of "The Great Gatsby," Nick Carraway is equally as uninteresting as all of the other characters.
As short as this novel is, it's way too slow in forming any conflict. The first 90 or so pages are just a bunch of people having fun at Gatsby's house, and when the conflicts finally do arrive, there're not tense, nor interesting because of the hapless character development.
Even when one of the above four characters kills a pedestrian in a hit and run car accident, there is no edginess, nor decent resolution. The theme of the novel is an ancient one. If health, wealth, emotional and physical love are captured, then what? How do you live your live and what is true happiness?
How this story is considered an American classic novel is beyond me, then again I liked the Beavis and Butt Head book; "This Book Sucks" released in November 1993.
