I read the Great Gatsby in high school. Or tried to. I may have resorted to Cliffs Notes. I can't even remember. I can't remember one thing about that novel, other than the title. The words crossed my retinas but made no impression beyond that. Just could not engage with it at all. And I liked reading, just not the stuff they assigned in English class.
That makes me very sad, it is one of my favorite books. I know an internet stranger is unlikely to convince you, but here’s my endorsement:
It’s the story of an outsider who gives up everything in order to join the “in crowd”, and at the end finds that it was all meaningless. I think this is impactful because it forces the reader (or at least, forced me) to deeply consider what _I_ wanted out of life, instead of what others want, or what seems conventional.
Wow. That’s a really important message. Unfortunately, I didn’t get that at all when I read it. I just read about some dude that wanted to party with the rich kids. And I was trying to pay attention and got good grades. The issue might be that I simply wasn’t emotionally intelligent at the time to understand, and I think that was the case for most of us. Or maybe just me…
Reminds me of The Wire, when DeAngelo Barksdake discussing the meaning of the quote "there are no second acts in American lives".[1] It's a roomful of prisoners that only grasped that once their first act was over.
It's a whole show of people dying on the streets by 20.
I feel a lot of "literature" reading may reflect experiences a high school student (generously) may not relate to, or (less generously) may not have the life experiences to understand, and may not necessarily gain by reading?
That's one of the things about reading though, it lets you experience life experiences you might have been exposed to on your own. You still have to met things halfway by using your brain a bit, which a lot of students really push back against for some reason. I suspect part of it is that it's the first time they are really asked to read something critically and not just for straight forward instruction or for enjoyment.
I think schools are trying to teach critical reading skills earlier now, but it's hard because if it's not interesting kids won't read it and if it's interesting they might not learn the critical skills necessary to evaluate it under any other lens than it being interesting or enjoyable.
I think this is it, though for certain works, we spent a lot of time in class discussing and acting out and this sort of engagement greatly increased my appreciation and comprehension of those works, thanks to my English teachers.
Same goes for “they never taught us how to pay taxes!” Often, the kids were directly taught just that, but the time gap between when they learned and when it was needed means they forgot, even if they at least pretended to pay attention.
So many of the "high school" books would be much, much better read if the message was emblazoned on the cover.
I don't even care if people agree what the book says, I just needed something to look for, because most of them were completely ignorable or outright infuriating.
At least today's kids can have an AI or YouTube video explain what the teacher wants to hear so they can move on to doing something interesting.
Curricula assign these books to students so they can learn to interpret their meanings without needing it explicitly stated. Of course, the teacher will offer an interpretation after the students have tried their hand at it, but the whole point of the exercise would be defeated by printing the interpretation at the outset. We should not be further offloading critical thinking in service of entertainment value.
You may also have already had experiences that formed the notion that being part of the in crowd wasn't worth it.
I also read it in high school and I recall spending about half the book muttering "oh my God, Gatsby, there are so many other women in the world get over yourself."
I read The Great Gatsby recently for the first time and didn't enjoy it even slightly, probably because of its focus on status. Or maybe because I'm an engineer type from New Zealand? I decided to read the book because it's a classic, and occasionally I find a classic I absolutely love (often when I start with low expectations). Loved Catch 22, love anything by Steinbeck (although I would generally avoid US classic books - maybe due to my colonial background).
I remember I loved the use of language, but hated the entirely uninteresting plot & characters.
"Main character discovers that meaning in life can't come from external social success" is a great basis for a philosophy but makes a poor plot for a novel.
I read it a long time ago and like you have very little recollection of it. However in high school we also read Homer and several plays by Shakespeare and remember a lot of details - I think my English teachers did a great job of explaining the context and chairing our discussions about those other works. I was thinking it’s hard to relate to Tom and Daisy in high school but then the other works are separated from us by culture and centuries (though to be fair translations we read for Homer are each a work in themselves)
I remember not liking the characters and wondering why should I read this, but now I have come to appreciate the value of understanding the view points of other people in spite of how I might feel about their actions and words or be distanced from their existence by virtue in this case of the wealth and privilege available to them.
Homer and Shakespear at least have the advantage of being referred to all the time elsewhere. If you don't at least know the basics of Romeo and Juliet you're going to be confused many times (there's something called Romeo and Juliet laws, for goodness sake).
I can't recall anything referencing the Great Gatsby, but maybe they went over my head because I can't recall anything about that except that the Gatsby was apparently Great.
>Homer and Shakespear at least have the advantage of being referred to all the time elsewhere.
That's true for most of the works in the canon of works that are commonly taught in schools, people that didn't pay attention tend to miss them or be confused by them though. Every time we remove some work by Dickens or Shakespeare from our canon, we lose a bit of that shared culture.
OK, that's your experience. On the other hand, https://eu.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2013/05/07/why-the-... offers some pointers as to why a fair number of people have a more positive reaction. Although it is, in a way, an obvious statement, the very last line somehow always stuck with me reading it years ago "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
2 Dudes. Girl. One dude becomes rich and throws parties, but is incomplete without Girl. Other dude (the main character, technically) works to make ends meet, but marries Girl. Rich dude connects with married dude to get close to Girl. That's the main motif at least.
A book about what happiness means and how and if you can ever shape and re-shape yourself to pursue it. Only the quote in the afterword really stood out to me, and I later learn that that's not even in the book; it's in the 50's movie adaptation:
>“There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again.”
The rest was more slice of life details about the roaring 20's. That quickly escalates when the Rich dude lends his car to someone else and he runs over someone. Rich dude takes the bullet in revenge when the husband of the run over person takes revenge.
I think you've missed a person in your account. The guy Daisy marries is not working to make ends meet, he's an old-money racist (Tom mixes up Henry Goddard, one of the most famous proponents of eugenics in the 1910's and 1920's, and Lothrup Stoddard's book _The Rising Tide of Color_ which inspired Adolf Hitler, but liked both, even if he can't remember who wrote what). Tom Buchanan is just as fantastically wealthy as Gatsby but in the understated old-money ways, contrasting with Gatsby's new money extravagance. Tom conducts an affair with a nearby, much poorer woman, but is enraged at the hint that Daisy is having an affair with Gatsby. The combination of his affair and his anger at the possibility of her affair is what drives the novel to its explosive climax.
The guy who is working to make ends meet is the narrator, Nick Carraway. Daisy is his cousin, which is why he gets to hang around these much more wealthy people. Of course, the way he is working to make ends meet is as a bond salesman on Wall Street, but at the time bonds were a sleepy corner of the financial system, it didn't become the ticket to enormous wealth until the 1980s.
Similarly, another reference that made sense at the time but is lost to the modern reader is the book's reference to Gatsby making his money in drug stores- that meant he was a bootlegger. You could get a doctor's order for alcohol so drug stores were legal speakeasy's. Walgreen's in particular did absurdly well under prohibition, growing from 20 stores in 1920 to 400 stores in 1930, on the basis of its medicinal whiskey, available to anyone with a prescription.
I read a fascinating discussion the other week that Tom's racism may not be incidental to the plot, but one of the keys to unlocking some other deeper/semi-hidden insights into it. The innocuous sounding question at the top of that rabbit hole was "Is Gatsby white?" It's a fascinating question and there's lots of evidence that Gatsby is at least white-passing (seemingly no problem in the segregated at the time Seelbach Hotel, for instance), but that doesn't necessarily mean white, especially to the sort of old-money racist that Tom is portrayed to be.
With Sinners doing so well in cinemas this month, it's an interesting time to question if there is a racial component to The Great Gatsby that hasn't been so obvious even after decades of (somewhat) close reads by at least High Schoolers.
It also got me thinking about the possible reasons why F. Scott Fitzgerald dedicated The Great Gatsby to his wife and the Deep South rumors that she wasn't white but only white-passing.
>reference to Gatsby making his money in drug stores- that meant he was a bootlegger.
You don't have to dig that far into it for the reference, Gatsby's business associate is a mobster who Gatsby says "fixed the World Series back in 1919". Even if you don't know exactly what kind of crime he is up to it is kind of obvious that he is in a criminal enterprise based on who he works with.
Oops, you are indeed right. I was mixing in Tom and Nick in my memories. Needed to use 3 dudes to properly sell my horrible cliff notes.
Yeah, looking back there's a lot of history sprinkled in that I didn't appreciate when I was 16 and reading this for a teacher I really didn't like to begin with.
the good news is that the book is very short and an easy weekend read and also recently in the public domain. which may be prompting a bunch of online content about it.
I wonder whether it also has something to do with the use of its phrase "careless people" as the title of a currently-famous book about how awful Meta's senior management is.
I know this is kinda tone deaf to ask in a section about books, but: how was the Leonardo DiCaprio modern adaption? I read the book and was well out of college when it premiered, but I never had much interest in seeing it at the time. Does it do the book justice, or at least the much much older adaptation?
i personally enjoyed both and felt they added color in their own way. the point of the story is that it touches on deep feelings ; i personally felt dicaprio did a really good job of exuding the dodgy side of gatsby superimposed on the vulnerable human within but then that’s probably mostly in the eye of the beholder.
judging from my teenage daughter’s reactions to film in general, i’d guess a younger audience would prefer the newer film because it would feel to be of higher production value with better fit and finish.
My daughter was reading a trilogy when this school year started; she had finished the first book and was excited about it. Unfortunately, her teacher this year demanded a lot of reading, and only from books she approved of, so my daughter never had a chance to read the other books in the trilogy. It's been an endless deluge of assigned books, some she likes, some she dislikes. The teacher made no effort to facilitate students reading things they were personally interested in. Sad. At least now that the school year is ending she can finally read what she wants.
I'm okay with some assigned reading, but it would be nice if the assignments could make room for students to choose their own reading. Like, she would have to write down a bunch of new words she encountered--she can do that just as well with the books she chose herself.
Many high school assigned kind of books are really difficult to experience well before you've had a little more life experience, Gatsby is one of them.
That's one I actually liked reading, at least on the surface. Maybe I didn't get deep meaning out of it but I don't recall that one being a struggle to just get through.
Absolutely you don't need much emotional depth to enjoy a story about a man struggling against the ocean and a fish. You miss things, but it's still enjoyable.
You will be cursed with years of calling every pharmacy in town once a month to figure out which one has your medication in stock this time, and once you figure that out, you stay on the phone with them until you walk into the store to pick it up so they don't give it to someone else.
