THE GREAT GATSBY WRAPUP
Hey y'all! I apologize that this post is going up a little late, and without the video attached, but it will all be edited together soon so stay tuned! I just didn't want to miss a post, so here we go.
First off, impressions of The Great Gatsby: I've never read this book. I don't know how I managed sixteen years of school, including four years of being an English major, without reading it, but I did. But now I see why this is on 5/5 of internet lists. It was good! I really liked it. Not in the same way I liked something like Jane Eyre or Madame Bovary, but I liked it.
That being said, everyone is an asshole, but it's all in the writing about how much you're okay with them being assholes. There's a point to be made about everyone's assholery. It's not like in Wuthering Heights where everything is dark and depressing and vaguely incestuous and I want to punch everyone in the face for different reasons and feels like it ultimately comes to nothing. With Gatsby, it's part of the point that everyone is an ashole, but it works within the universe of the book. Jay Gatsby thinks he can do everything, but he can't. Daisy can't make decisions. Everything turns out terribly, but you still manage to feel for them. (I think that's the main way this is different from Wuthering Heights: I couldn't get behind any of the characters.)
Let's talk about the symbolism: mostly with the colors. Especially the faint green light. I have heard about that damn light so much. For something that only shows up two or three times in a novel that's 180 pages long, you'd think it would be in every other scene. Sure, it's well played when it's there, but I thought it would show up SO MUCH MORE. John Green mentioned in a Crash Course video that it's become kind of an enchanted object for Gatsby - something that implies that Daisy is okay with everything until otherwise stated. I agree with that, but I also think it's become an enchanted object for critics because I never got away from it.
The color yellow also comes up a lot. Everything is yellow. Happiness. Prosperity. Gatsby's tie and Daisy's dress and Jordan's hair. So much is yellow. But that's also a critical color towards the end of the book: Gatsby's car that kills Myrtle is also yellow, so it turns into a deadly color too (and after that he wears pink a lot). I also just realized that the centers of actual daisy flowers are also yellow, so daisy the character also has this balance of the two meanings of the color. She has the life and prosperity of the jazz age and her inherited wealth and her role as a mother, but also the darkness and responsibility of someone else's death. So there's that.
Do you like this book? Do you hate it? Let me know!
First off, impressions of The Great Gatsby: I've never read this book. I don't know how I managed sixteen years of school, including four years of being an English major, without reading it, but I did. But now I see why this is on 5/5 of internet lists. It was good! I really liked it. Not in the same way I liked something like Jane Eyre or Madame Bovary, but I liked it.
That being said, everyone is an asshole, but it's all in the writing about how much you're okay with them being assholes. There's a point to be made about everyone's assholery. It's not like in Wuthering Heights where everything is dark and depressing and vaguely incestuous and I want to punch everyone in the face for different reasons and feels like it ultimately comes to nothing. With Gatsby, it's part of the point that everyone is an ashole, but it works within the universe of the book. Jay Gatsby thinks he can do everything, but he can't. Daisy can't make decisions. Everything turns out terribly, but you still manage to feel for them. (I think that's the main way this is different from Wuthering Heights: I couldn't get behind any of the characters.)
Let's talk about the symbolism: mostly with the colors. Especially the faint green light. I have heard about that damn light so much. For something that only shows up two or three times in a novel that's 180 pages long, you'd think it would be in every other scene. Sure, it's well played when it's there, but I thought it would show up SO MUCH MORE. John Green mentioned in a Crash Course video that it's become kind of an enchanted object for Gatsby - something that implies that Daisy is okay with everything until otherwise stated. I agree with that, but I also think it's become an enchanted object for critics because I never got away from it.
The color yellow also comes up a lot. Everything is yellow. Happiness. Prosperity. Gatsby's tie and Daisy's dress and Jordan's hair. So much is yellow. But that's also a critical color towards the end of the book: Gatsby's car that kills Myrtle is also yellow, so it turns into a deadly color too (and after that he wears pink a lot). I also just realized that the centers of actual daisy flowers are also yellow, so daisy the character also has this balance of the two meanings of the color. She has the life and prosperity of the jazz age and her inherited wealth and her role as a mother, but also the darkness and responsibility of someone else's death. So there's that.
Do you like this book? Do you hate it? Let me know!
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