Why Is The Great Gatsby Important To Me

I have read a multitude of books, stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, unable to put down the latest addition to my literary collection. I have learned imperative lessons of compassion and valor, grieved after the deaths of my favourite characters and grinned after their triumphs. There is, however, a single novel that my brain still ponders over, day and night, a novel I am sure will remain with me until I am old and grey; F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 story, The Great Gatsby.

I remember opening the worn library copy of the book, eager to start. The spine cracked and bent, the smell of aged paper filled my nose, just as any other old book before. Little did I know that this 180-page novel was about to change my life forever. I was completely

and utterly entranced from the opening paragraph up until the last. Fitzgerald’s writing transported me to another time. I was no longer in my Windsor bedroom, I was in the bright and riveting streets of 1920s New York City.
The Great Gatsby is considered a classic American novel. Not only does it accurately delineate the lifestyle of the wealthy during the 1920s, it challenges what people had come to know as “The American Dream”. Fitzgerald's novella inquiries about the idea that affluence, prestige and notoriety are all needed to feel content.
The Great Gatsby is a story about prosperity and what must be done in order to achieve it.

It is a story about love and hate, about loyalty and disloyalty, about appearance and reality. Fitzgerald’s novel encapsulates and symbolizes 1920s America in its entirety, in particular, the loss of the American dream in an era of prodigious success and material lavishness.

The Great Gatsby is narrated by recent Yale graduate and bond salesman, Nick Carraway, his thoughts and perceptions giving colour to the story. Nick has recently relocated to New York, renting a house next door to an eccentric millionaire, who he comes to know as Jay Gatsby. At one of Gatsby’s seemingly never-ending parties, Nick finds out about the past tumultuous relationship between none other than Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, Nick’s cousin and friend Tom Buchanan’s wife.

When Gatsby made his first appearance at one of his lavish parties, I was instantly captivated. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald tells Gatsby’s real story, a story about a poor boy named Jimmy Gatz who left his family in search of something bigger, something brighter. This something is found in a woman and in fortune. Gatsby's journey leads him from impoverishment to opulence, into the embrace of his dearest, and ultimately to his

demise.
The Great Gatsby is a novella whose writing shines as bright as 1920s New York City. Until this day, I find myself thinking of the tenacious and paradoxical Jay Gatsby, the lonely and vigilant Nick Carraway, and the enigmatic and superficial Daisy Buchanan. Fitzgerald’s portrayal of American life during that era; the automobiles, the endless unrestrained celebrations, the eternal desolation, is exactly what makes this story unforgettable.