Preview

Book Report The Great Gatsby

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
947 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Book Report The Great Gatsby
Book Report for Prayer and Spirituality Course

Title: The Great Gatsby

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons

Copyright Date: April 10, 1925

1. What is the primary theme of this book? What is the basic message the author is trying to convey?

1) Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night—resulted ultimately in the corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble
…show more content…
There is a good example in this book. Daisy Buchanan who is the lover of Jay Gatsby, but she is the wife of Tom Buchanan. She grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, where she met and fell in love with Gatsby. She describes herself as “sophisticated” and says the best thing a girl can be is a “beautiful little fool,” which makes it unsurprising that she lacks conviction and sincerity, and values material things over all else. Yet Daisy isn’t just a shallow gold digger. She’s more tragic: a loving woman who has been corrupted by greed. She chooses the comfort and security of money over real love, but she does so knowingly. Daisy’s tragedy conveys the alarming extent to which the lust for money captivated Americans during the Roaring …show more content…
Greed is the inordinate desire to possess wealth, goods, or objects of abstract value with the intention to keep it for one's self, far beyond the dictates of basic survival and comfort. It is applied to a markedly high desire for and pursuit of wealth, status, and power. Greed is bad because it stems from, and strengthens, the mistaken belief that your personal value and identity relate to the things you possess and control, instead of who you are and what you do. It promotes the idea the little 'me' that wanders around in this temporary shell is my true self, and undermines the 'I'; the true relationship and living identity with all that is, and thereby supports, strengthens and promotes the Fear that is born of loss and separation from the one. "I" and "you" are but the lattices in the niches of a lamp, through which the one light

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    | |Literary fiction─ one of two main types of fiction─ can be more specified in the…

    • 6449 Words
    • 26 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In chapter 3, Nick was invited to party at Gatsby’s place. There, Nick meets up with Jordan Baker and Gatsby. Nick was surprised to meet Gatsby because he had been looking for him at the party all night. Gatsby spoke with Jordan alone and talked for hours, but Jordan was not allowed to tell anyone about their conversation. When everyone was trying to leave the party there was a car accident. Nick discovers that he is not in love with Jordan and finds out that she is a liar.…

    • 352 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The chapter starts out with Nick writing and depicting the burial service two years after Gatsby died. Nick describes the swarms of columnists, writers, and gossipmongers at the house after the murder. They take the information that they received and write up insane, edgy stories about Gatsby and the ways of his relationship to Myrtle and Wilson. Nick feels that Gatsby would not want to have a memorial service alone, so he attempts to hold a substantial burial service for him. From Nick’s attempt, however, most of Gatsby's previous companions and colleagues have either vanished or disappeared, moved away without sending location, or decline to come. The only people who decide to go to Gatsby’s memorial service are Nick, Owl Eyes, a couple of…

    • 341 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Thesis statement: Jay Gatsby has to strive; that makes him keep going and feeling alive.…

    • 379 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    In The Great Gatsby, by Scott Fitzgerold. Symbolism is used to describe the action taking place in the story. It is also used to describe individual character’s emotions and true natures. Symbolism is used to describe a multiple things but doing it in a way that you have to think about it. In this book most things are symbolized to make it easier to describe them. Colours and some personal belongings were mainly used to describe a characters effect in the book. Things that were not said but described were symbolized. Finally, the separation of the classes was used to show how life in the time the story takes place.…

    • 1332 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Jay Gatsby started running booze during prohibition, just like the southerners started running moonshine. You had to have a quick car and a skilled and fast driver to run alcohol in the 1920’s. Both boot legging during prohibition and after in the 30’s and 40’s tie in with Gatsby’s wealth and the start of car racing. Gatsby’s love of expensive and fast cars could have been derived from his old habit of running illegal booze. In fact after Gatsby’s death he gets a call saying one of the men got caught running “shine”. Gatsby was most defiantly connected with the running of alcohol, which contributed to the rise of stock car racing.…

    • 447 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ridge Scholarship Essay

    • 819 Words
    • 4 Pages

    On the surface, The Great Gatsby reads as a story of thwarted love between a man and a woman. The real theme of the novel, however, encompasses a highly symbolic meditation on 1920’s America as a whole, and, in particular, the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess. Fitzgerald portrays the 1920’s as an era of decaying social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby himself hosts every Saturday night—resulted ultimately in the corruption of the…

    • 819 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The majority of what Fitzgerald writes in his stories are about the love for rich girls. In real life he has personally experienced falling for a wealthy girl, Zelda. In the book, The Great Gatsby, he writes about a boy who isn’t rich that is in love with a girl named daisy, who is rich like Zelda. Gatsby later lost his love, Daisy, when he went to war, for Fitzgerald, he was rejected by Ginevra King’s father who said “poor boys don’t marry wealthy girls,” which was said by Daisy in the book. He was asking for her hand in marriage. Then Fitzgerald got denied by Zelda Sayre. Daisy, the women jay Gatsby has been basing on his whole life on, is similar to Zelda Sayre who would not marry him at first since he was unsuccessful Fitzgerald lived in Great Neck, Long Island, in which his first child was born. To Zelda, Fitzgerald was seen poor but he was really upper middle class, but Zelda’s Standards were too high, like Daisy. Gatsby and Fitzgerald both met vital women to their lives at dances and both while they were stationed at army camps…

    • 611 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Great Gatsby Summary

    • 519 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In this article, Barry Gross talks about The Great Gatsby as one of the colossal disastrous works of American writing. He trusts that the durable advance of Gatsby lies, partially, in the American peruser's ready response to the novel's disastrous legend. The Great Gatsby was distributed in 1925 and has turned into a social archive. Gross incorporates into the paper that Nick perceives everything in telling the story from his discernment and how Gatsby is a disastrous legend in the novel. A collection first year recruit Nick who knows nothing about the twenties and he knows exactly what the novel is about. The novel substance exceptionally fundamental needs that couple of current books can be fulfilled. Gross keeps up that it satisfies our need to affirm our adamant religions in goals of boldness, honor, love and dependably. Like Gatsby's grin, it fulfills our need to recollect our interminable limits and guarantees us that it has the impression of us we plan to…

    • 519 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    B. O.S- Time is the one thing that keeps going and never stops. Every day we’re told that we don’t have much time left in our daily life. People will tell you to enjoy every single second of your life because you won’t be able to enjoy it again. The past is something that we can’t go back yet, you think about it as time goes by. The past can contain beautiful or horrific moments of your life. If those who suffer a bad past, they would want to change it. If those who had a good past, they would want to experience it again. For example, A kid remembers the good memories of their childhood friend before their friend changed into a jerk. The child would want their friend back to their…

    • 944 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hundreds might have flocked to Jay Gatsby’s mansion on the weekends to party the night away, but do extravagant get-togethers and large sums of money give the title The Great to somebody? One cannot be considered great because of money or parties. An individual must earn the title great by being truthful, hardworking, and respectful. Jay Gatsby cannot be considered great because he is dishonest, earned his fortune through illegal activity, and too focused on the past.…

    • 676 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    After many years of working hard and learning in school, students tend to become tired and stressed, seeking a way to escape it all. As J. Maarten Troost wrote, “Escapism, we are led to believe, is evidence of a deficiency in character, a certain failure of temperament, and like so many -isms, it is to be strenuously avoided. 'How do you expect to get ahead?' people ask. But the question altogether misses the point. The escapist doesn't want to get ahead. He simply wants to get away.” (Troost)…

    • 766 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby’s life is seen through the eyes of Nick Carraway. He had recently moved to West Egg, a peninsula off of Long Island. Next door lived an eccentric wealthy man named Jay Gatsby. Across the bay, his cousin Daisy lived with her husband in East Egg. Five years ago Daisy and Gatsby had met in her hometown and fell in love briefly before he had to serve in the war. With the arrival of Nick the two were reacquainted. Though many claim that The Great Gatsby was a tragic love story, it was actually a representation of the unattainable american dream. In the novel F Scott Fitzgerald uses Daisy as a metaphor of what Gatsby could never have and what he needed to complete his dream through the use of symbolism and diction.…

    • 263 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In chapter four of The Great Gatsby F. by Scott Fitzgerald, Jourdan explains to Nick that…

    • 662 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Essay on the Great Gatsby

    • 860 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Jay Gatsby’s journey to reunite with his past love Daisy is one of great tragedy and romance. Fitzgerald’s use of past, present, and future paints the picture of truly how tragic this five-year journey was for Gatsby. Gatsby loses the ability to live in the present because of his intense fixation on the past and his dreams of the future. Because of this inability, it becomes clear rather quickly that a relationship with Daisy is an unreachable goal.…

    • 860 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays