You have a man who fought for his country and became incredibly rich through his own means, hard work, and ingenuity. Does he enjoy his wealth and new found social status? Does he honor his fallen comrades by living the life they no longer can? Does he find happiness and peace after a long struggle that was his life?
No, he does not. You have a crybaby who pines after a woman whom she herself does not recognize as a man by throwing parties for people he does not care for and who neither love him, nor accept him, in return. He's so desperately in love with this shade, this thing that can't be described as human so akin is she to be more properly described as an ornament, with no interesting qualities or redeeming features except her face and body, that he buys a house, an entire structure with the surrounding land, right across from where she lives. He himself does not even have the courage to properly face and express his love for her, even if it means facing off against an obvious, if not mentally deficient, at the very least emotionally disturbed, terrible and insufferable human being. So what is his reward after all of this? A death that no one acknowledges, save for one sniveling coward.
So to reiterate, and tl;dr, fuck this book, fuck the people in it, fuck the "scenery" and "imagery", fuck everything in it, and fuck you and everyone else for thinking this was anything other than a glorified pseudo-psychological bullshit profile into the mind of a self-destructive, whiny, sad sack of shit known simply as Gatsby. I hate this book so fucking much.
>>8000447
reminds you too much of your oneitis, OP?
Who ever told you you were supposed to enjoy it?
>>8000447
is this seriously considered a classic
murika
>>8000447
>reading for plot
Stay pleb, shitbird.
>>8000455
>unironically using the term "oneitis"
You are worse than OP
Back to your containment board please
>>8000455
He was a fucking person who couldn't grow as an individual, despite having wealth, fame, and power after being poor, statusless, and weak. He could have had anyone he wanted. What hare brained reasoning could have possibly made him settle for this vapid, useless, worthless tart? HE WAS BETTER THAN THAT. He was better than that. Fuck this book.
>>8000483
The entire point of the story was that he was an idealist who let the concept of the girl, the concept of status, the concept of his lifestyle ahead of any of their actual substance. This is what is known as a "flaw," and some say it actually makes characters somewhat interesting, you angry prick.
>>8000447
>profile into the mind of a self-destructive, whiny, sad sack of shit known simply as Gatsby.
Why do you say that like it's a bad thing?
Gatsby is a man who fell for the iconic lie that is the "American Dream." He believed that if he worked hard, got really rich and popular, he'd have all the things he wants in life and be accepted into the high ranks of the East Egg.
Only, that's not how things worked out. No matter what he does, how much he gains, how many friends he has, he'll never be allowed in to America's nobility.
The book is essentially a portrait of the roaring 20s; thanks to the stock market, masses of previously poor people (new money) suddenly had a whole, whole lot of money. But the established families (old money) didn't quite like that, so they set up a bit of a barrier between them.
Eventually, the twenties led into the 30s, and people who thought they'd finally made it suddenly found themselves poorer than they were before.
Didn't your HS lit class teach you nothing, anon?
Everyone from this story deserves an unhappy ending, all of the characters fucking suck shit.
>>8000521
I tend to sympathize with Gatsby. All he really wanted was become successful and happy, part of the select few elite everyone looks up to. But he was doomed from the start, and no matter how much he tried, how hard he pushed himself, he could never make it past that glass ceiling over him.
>>8000483
I dunno man I kinda wanted to fuck Daisy too
>>8000543
Oh, so you're just ticked off with the bad end? No prob, i can sympathize with that. It's just one of my fav books so i get a little edgy when people shit on it
>>8000608
Well, that, the whole tone of the book, and the characters. Only half-way decent person in it Dr. T.J. Ecklebur and he was on a fucking billboard.
>>8000447
Your opinion would be valid if it were a biography, but it's not. you're not grasping the themes.
>>8000626
Aren't all novels, in some way, a biography? You have a person telling the life of another, whether real or imagined. Out there, somewhere in the world, an individual sat down, thought of this... world, this universe in which the people and characters act out their lives, and scribe those words, those feelings, those ideas to stone for us to read, dissect, discuss, and wonder. For you to sit there, in some unknown region of space and time to tell me that my opinion into what this novel represented, to the best part of my knowledge, is baffling, insulting, degrading, and just down right disrespectful.
>>8000447
>thnx 4 ur cervix
>>8000659
'no'
It's funny because this is one of the only books I read in High School that I have actually enjoyed.
>>8000659
>Aren't all novels, in some way, a biography?
you could literally say this for anything
>Isn't all X, in some ways, Y?
>>8000659
you should probably kill yourself since you haven't read as i lay dying
Sad little man Gatsby can’t get anyone to like him. Maybe he’s not as rich as he thinks. NOT GREAT AT ALL
>>8000447
It's just the author's diary with imaged richness and shit.
>>8000447
That's kinda the point, dude.
>>8000543
It doesn't matter if you do.
>>8000447
>it's awful since he doesn't get any reward
But Fitzgerald was commenting on American life in the 20s, with Gatsby as a surrogate for basically anyone with new money. The fact that he fails in the end means that in reality the people with new money also failed in that they weren't accepted by the old money. If your feel outraged (which you clearly do) then Fitzgerald communicated quite effectively. If you don't like it you could always pick out something with a lighter subject matterI think Gatsby was simply a lesser asshole than everyone else in the book, and that his demise was poignant rather than tragic
Does anyone think that Fitzgerald used Nick as a vague model after himself?
OP wants Gatsby starring Dan Bilzerian
OP did not consider that maybe the point of it is that Gatsby remains unfulfilled?
Agreed. Next for Farenheit 451 this is the worst book I read back in high school. That only thing I liked about the book was it's use of colors to match different characters with.
what the heck happened to /book/
>>8000447
Did you just read Atlas Shrugged or what? XD
>>8001279
>Does anyone think that Fitzgerald used Nick as a vague model after himself?
I don't really know about his similarities with Fitzgerald but Nick always seemed to me like Gatsby's antithesis. He's this strangely apathetic character who's essentially wasting his family's money in New York never really doing anything until he gets swept up in Gatsby's desire to have Daisy, which makes sense because Gatsby is someone with the sense of self and willpower that Nick lacks.
It's interesting because despite his fixation on Daisy, Gatsby is pretty fucking cool, but paradoxically he invented himself in an attempt to win her over, creating this chicken-egg relationship between Gatsby's motivations and his standing that's never resolved, but is nevertheless seen as nobler than Nick's total inaction.
>pseudo-psychological bullshit profile
That's Fitzgerald for ya
OP is a neckbeard autist who has never been in love.
Literally every high schooler's problem with this book
"I didn't like the characters, so the books is bad"
OP you've never loved a girl like that? its part of being a man. feel bad for you bro.
Its a great book op.
>>7999999
the book is great as an allegory on class in america.
but if you just look at the dynamics of the relationships themselves, gatsby is an unbelievable pussy. still wants his oneitis years later after she already had another man's child, tom is an alpha bad boy who fucks other women without caring what she thinks about it, gatsby is a supplicating beta trying to lure her with money, but she stays with tom. gatbsy is a super cuck.
>>8000447
I feel like OP is a kid in high school who just finished reading this book and doesn't understand the purpose, so he came over to /lit/ for his first--and probably last--post and threw a tantrum.
Maybe he was expecting empathy. Or maybe everyone to agree. Idk. Just guessing.
>an exceptional man who who has conquered all of life's travails but one clings to a bygone love that he has essentially misunderstood, maybe even imagined, it is an illusory fiction that he tells himself but also the only meaningful thing to him, his very drive and cause for being
>lolbetacuck
Modernity is disgusting
Gatsby is a romantic, he's a beautiful person, it's impossible to compare his dream of Daisy to anything you nihilistic faggots could conceive of, but that's essentially the point. It's not actually about Daisy, it is about the green light in general.
And it is this beauty, this genuineness that Nick refers to when he claims Gatsby was worth more than all the rest combined...and that he turned out alright in the end, Gatsby was alive in a way that they weren't, however briefly.
Getting hung up on some overly literal interpretation of the plot via a contemporary lens because it is unsympathetic to you is supremely retarded. And I will add, that I personally found it compelling.
>>8001518
>I don't really know about his similarities with Fitzgerald but Nick always seemed to me like Gatsby's antithesis. He's this strangely apathetic character who's essentially wasting his family's money in New York never really doing anything until he gets swept up in Gatsby's desire to have Daisy, which makes sense because Gatsby is someone with the sense of self and willpower that Nick lacks.
>It's interesting because despite his fixation on Daisy, Gatsby is pretty fucking cool, but paradoxically he invented himself in an attempt to win her over, creating this chicken-egg relationship between Gatsby's motivations and his standing that's never resolved, but is nevertheless seen as nobler than Nick's total inaction.
Do you recall the books opening lines? "Reserving judgement is a matter of infinite hope".
Nick is a wayward snob. What this wisdom passed down by his father has come to mean for him is almost perverse, I don't think he is apathetic so much as intentionally disconnected from a world he doesn't value. Which is why he is so impressed by Gatsby, he was so unlike everyone else involved in the rat-race, he was running his own race.
>>8001279
>Does anyone think that Fitzgerald used Nick as a vague model after himself?
Well, he made Nick an actual faggot, so maybe.
>>8005294
>I don't think he is apathetic so much as intentionally disconnected from a world he doesn't value.
I hadn't considered that, but I'm still not sure I quite agree.
The reason I describe him as apathetic is primarily due the passage below where he describes how he's enchanted by New York's sense of possibility and imagines a series of scenarios where he capitalizes on that opportunity in what is the most limp-dicked way possible, in contrast to the energy of Gatsby's party that precedes it.
>I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye.
>I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove.
>Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them to their apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded through a door into warm darkness.
>At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others—poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner—young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.
>Again at eight o’clock, when the dark lanes of the Forties were five deep with throbbing taxi cabs, bound for the theatre district, I felt a sinking in my heart.
>Forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted cigarettes outlined unintelligible gestures inside.
>Imagining that I, too, was hurrying toward gayety and sharing their intimate excitement, I wished them well.
Also of note is how Nick describes a brief relationship he had with a girl that ended when her brother told him to back off, especially when compared to the relationship between Gatsby and Daisy.
He doesn't have that same romanticism or drive that Gatsby has and that he desires. It's not so much that he doesn't value the world of New York, it's that he doesn't have the willpower to make himself a part of it in the way that Gatsby did.
>>8005360
He entertains the idea of tangling with this world, a fancy, nothing more. Just look at this dalliance with the tennis player.
Do you think Nick really approves of the everyman he is describing here, engaged in their carefree debauches? He keeps a distance for a reason, although his wistfulness is particularly strong here. And then I ask, does he approve of those in his own social circles either, of Daisy and Tom? He remains aloof there too.
Nick is romantic in his own more reserved way, which is why he can appreciate Gatsby but also recognize the folly of his dreams. There's something cynical in his understanding of the world, a sense of futility...
>Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
>>8005393
And just think of how the book concludes, it's Nick giving up, returning to the midwest, having had his fill of the 'possibilities' of the East.
