The Great Gatsby: "More than a love story"

“The Great Gatsby” is one of the most important novels of American literature. This masterpiece by F. Scott Fitzgerald marked a new era to the English modern literature. It’s an American classic and a wonderfully evocative work, which shows some insightful views of the “American Dream” in the 1920’s.

The story is narrated through the consciousness of the narrator, Nick Carraway. A Yale graduate that moves to New York and rents a house next door to the mansion of the eccentric millionaire, Jay Gatsby. Despite his fortune and his high living, Gatsby is dissatisfied. Nick finds out that Gatsby long ago was in love with a girl named Daisy, but she’s currently married with a man named Tom Buchanan. Daisy is Nick’s cousin. Gatsby asks Nick to help him meet Daisy once more, Nick agrees and they both reencounter again. Tom begins to suspect and the dream that Gatsby had would not be that easy to achieve.

F. Scott Fitzgerald paints a picture of a lifestyle and a decade that is both fascinating and horrific. The complexity of the characters in the novel makes a moving story that without doubt you will remember for a long time. The merit that F. Scott Fitzgerald has is that he captures a society and a set of young people, and he wrote them into myth. That gives a very interesting tone in the novel; it creates a realistic context in the story that makes the reader really believe that Gatsby was real. Many considered “The Great Gatsby” to be depressing, because, many of the characters that had dreams do not achieve their aspirations. However, Fitzgerald’s main message isn’t that dreams will lead you to despair, but that chasing an unworthy dream will lead to tragedy.

For readers who love Drama and Romance, this novel is perfect. Even to persons who don’t like books about love, this work from Fitzgerald is highly recommendable. This masterpiece captures brilliantly the American dream in a time when it had descended into decadence. I could say that “The Great Gatsby” is in many ways similar to Romeo and Juliet yet it is much more than a love story.