The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925. The setting is New York in the 1920s, with all its glamor and style. While the first-person narrator of the novel is a young man by the name of Nick Carraway, the main focus is on his rich neighbor, Jay Gatsby, and his relations with a woman named Daisy. After having seen the novel’s fairly recent movie adaptation this year, I thought I would give the book a try. What are some positive and negative aspects of this novel?

            The novel mainly consists of dialog, in addition to a couple of references to the setting. The language used is easy to understand and at no point confusing for the reader. Sentences are straight-forward and short, always bringing the story forward. Sometimes, however, there are references to place names that are not further described. This makes the setting difficult to imagine for anyone not oriented in the New York area. References to songs and articles from the time were, luckily, explained in the endnotes (in the Wordsworth edition). When Fitzgerald uses a lot of dialog, he exposes the characters in another way. He also captures the setting more thoroughly, as there is a lot of small talk, especially among the minor characters. I liked the way Fitzgerald did it, but I felt he could have described more of the setting for those who do not know that much about the New York area.

            Nick Carraway is definitely an interesting choice of narrator. His role is to see Gatsby’s situation from an outsider’s perspective. Seeing as he is Daisy’s second cousin, the reader also sees the conflict from both sides. Nick seems easy-going and optimistic, and as opposed to Gatsby he seems more inexperienced. Nick has just moved to New York and is ready to start a new life; one may say that Gatsby represents this new, mysterious lifestyle that one is introduced to when moving to such a large city. The reader only knows what the narrator knows, and so we explore and experience the city at the same time as Nick. I appreciate the way Fitzgerald uses narrative voice to tell the story, and I think this is a positive attribute to the novel.

            The story itself is very interesting. Although it primarily concerns romance, it does it in a way I have never seen before (I must confess I have not read a lot of romantic fiction). The feelings of the characters seem so mixed and conflicted that one is left wanting to read the thoughts of the other characters. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and thought it was well structured.

            The novel never gets boring. Being only 115 pages long, it manages to keep up the pace really well. Toward the end, I could not put it down for an instant. The story builds up in a very satisfying way, and Fitzgerald has done a great job at creating dynamic and complex characters.

 

All in all, I thought the novel was great and I am giving it 4/5. I will definitely be looking for some of his other works, such as The Beautiful and the Damned and The Love of the Last Tycoon.

- Charlie.

 

The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield: Unspoken Emotions and Controversial Discussions

The Garden Parties and Other Stories is a short story collection written by Katherine Mansfield and published in 1922. Mansfield was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1888. During her life she lived in New Zealand, England and France. She died early, only 35 years old, suffering from tuberculosis. One of her friends, and another great author from that period, Virginia Woolf, said the following about her writing: "She was for ever pursued by her dying, and had to press on through stages that should have taken years in ten minutes . . . She had a quality I adored and needed; I think her sharpness and reality - her having knocked about with prostitutes and so on, whereas I had always been respectable - was the thing I wanted then. I dream of her often . . ."

 

Mansfield's writing is very similar to Woolf's. When reading the first short story, I immediately thought of Woolf, as I had already read a couple of her novels. The short story collection consists of 15 short stories (in the Penguin Classics version, other versions contain more): At the Bay, The Garden Party, The Daughters of the Late Colonel, Mr and Mrs Dove, The Young Girl, Life of Ma Parker, Marriage à la Mode, The Voyage, Miss Brill, Her First Ball, The Singing Lesson, The Stranger, Bank Holiday, An Ideal Family, and The Lady's Maid. The settings of the stories are New Zealand, England and the French Riviera.

 

The book has received a lot of praise for its use of narrative. If the short story is long (as some are: At the Bay, for instance, is 33 pages long!), the narrator is to a very large degree omniscient, meaning that we get to know what several people think and feel. In my opinion, this makes the stories more reflected and shows how there are multiple perspectives in a conflict.

 

The short stories are written in a simple language that is easy to understand. One is, however, required to read between the lines in all her stories; even though the narrator is omniscient, the characters' feelings are never clearly shown. One has to look at several actions made by the characters to understand how they feel.

 

The short story collection discusses various topics which were considered taboo at the time: homosexuality, racism, class struggle, sexism, etc. Another short story written by Mansfield, not included in this collection, Leves Amores (1907), received strong reactions due to the story being about two women going on a date. In The Garden Party and Other Stories injustice is shown by provocation through the characters' actions, which at our time would be seen as despicable. Displaying injustice in this manner shows the example of extreme cases, but they are nevertheless effective.

 

 

 

I am giving The Garden Party and Other Stories 5/5. I thought it was brilliant, and I loved every minute of reading it. I will definitely buy her other works and read them with pleasure.

 

- Charlie.