School Review: The Great Gatsby

*Spoilers*

Welcome to a new mini-series! This year for my AP English class, we are reading 5 books throughout the school year. This is the most I’ve ever read for a class and they are all considered classics. I was thinking and I thought it would be fun to review them after my class has moved on from them. I could remove my academic filter from it, the one I have to put on cause school haha, and just say my true thoughts on it. It would give me a place to spill all my negative feelings for it if I have them and just view them from a lenses like with what I normally read. First up is The Great Gatsby. And just a warning that I do have a good amount of negative thoughts haha.

I think I get the point. I get raucous behavior, the excessive drinking, and the overall loosening of morals. I understand the message of blurring the lines of morals. And I do understand that this was written a long time ago. But I think it could have done better. There are so many better books that explore morally gray themes and don’t follow a bunch of cheating jerks who have too much money on their hands.

Nick doesn’t have a backbone. Tom is downright horrible. Daisy just takes the easy way out. Jordan is just there. And Gatsby is obsessed and cares about nothing other than Daisy. This creates a storm that I want to be nowhere near. I did not like any of the characters and I did not like anything that they did. I will say that most of it is personal preference. I am such an introvert and all the partying and having guests over at random times is not my cup of tea. It made me feel uncomfortable. Maybe that was the point? I don’t know.

I could do without the cheating. I could do without the stalking. I could do without the toxic relationship. I could do without the domestic abuse.  The reason I get so fired up about this book is because some boy in my class said what Gatsby did for Daisy was romantic. How he stalked her cause he needed closure. And how it was all fine since he never ‘physically hurt’ her and was mostly alright when Daisy let him down. Are you seeing red? Cause I was. He eventually backed down from, but I’m not sure if he ever changed his mind.

I think the main theme of the book was lost on me and flew right over my head. It might be because I was too busy hating it or I have just read better books that explore this theme in a better way. Probably a little bit of both. I just know there was too much stuff that made me too angry to appreciate the point.

If nothing else, this gave me more appreciation for the morally gray books that I do love. Vicious and Not Even Bones are good examples and I find them to be much more interesting and way less problematic.

I am interested to hear your thoughts on this! Please tell me what you think, I would love to hear!

Thank you for reading!