Book: "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Even though I wasn't actively writing on my blog, I was very active in dealing with the written words of others. On that note, below is my review on "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerlad. Enjoy!

I was always fascinated and wanted to know more about the life between the two world wars and I must admit I was slightly nostalgic about not living in those years. Fitzgerlad however, he was a part of those years and wrote about them, but the envy I felt towards him faded... Reading “The Great Gatsby” I came to the stunning realization that those times and ours are not at all that different: the same desire to be appreciated for one’s greatness (real or imagined), the same difference between high class and the rest, the same hobbies and rudeness when discussing other people’s personal lives, the way people behave at a party when there’s alcohol involved, the secrets behind each marriage and the ones hidden in its main actors… and then it dawned on me, as long as each century has humans as main actors the events will pretty much be the same – human nature never changes.

Everyone noticed that Fitzgerald managed to create a picture perfect radiography of those times and I will not try to rewrite all the previous reviews on the “Great Gatsby” by focusing on this fact. The interesting part in his book however is the way the emerging technologies (telephone, cinema), marketing (advertising boards, tabloids), stock market and banking innovations and high power engine cars start to weasel their ways in the lives of the humans changing them slightly, but profoundly. Reading the book now, we can see how those changes impacted our lives and not in the most positive way. Fitzgerald did not create only a picture perfect radiography of this times, he showed, pulled the alarm if you will, on the beginnings of the human life’s degradation the innovations on all levels and the new technologies will bring. The telephone advertised as a tool to get in no time and at lower costs people from great distances together, is now a tool through which you can connect to the internet; companies can obtain your number and invade you intimacy by calling you up to sell you goods you don’t necessary want or need; also based on your activities on the phone the same producing companies can put together a customer profile for you; but probably the most devastating effect of the phone is the lack of personal connection between the two conversation’s participants (feelings can be exchanged with difficulty, because there is no interpersonal communication on the phone), which is the meaning of the scene when Nick answers the phone and the person on the other line doesn’t recognize him as not being Gatsby.

All the stories developed in the novel end in a way that only confirm and complete this almost apocalyptic tableau of dehumanization. Fitzgerald’s storytelling overall tone is mean and disapproving of this entire situation. He criticizes almost without even wanting all the human written or unspoken laws and regulations: the older generation of the industrial revolution’s wealthy, the current generation fascinated by young women, fast cars and alcohol drenched parties, the gangsters and other dubious characters involved in various illicit affairs, the cheaters and murderers. Nobody is spared. The only value he has above it all is the camaraderie, the friendship that lasts against all life’s troubles – the connection between humans, the one that is not fragile and cannot be broken by lies, murder or other sins. This is also the reason he disapproves of all the new technologies – they threaten the existence of this exact connection and of the reason why the humans are humans.
Another aspect that I immensely enjoyed was the language. I wish contemporary writers will still use this exquisitely rich language. I must admit, though, that in order to do so one must have a pretty high both literary and grammatical knowledge of the English language.