You Should Read THE GREAT GATSBY
“Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!”
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Each year of my teaching career, springtime brings heavy snows, standardized tests, and The Great Gatsby. I doubt I’m alone: it’s one of the most commonly taught novels in high school classrooms. In case you’ve missed the book or film adaptations or inspired-by retellings or many other pop culture references, The Great Gatsby is about Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire of dubious origin who builds an over-the-top lifestyle in the hopes of reclaiming lost time and rekindling a relationship with his former love. It’s also about Nick Carraway, a WWI vet who escapes his midwestern restlessness by traveling to New York, where he gets entangled in the lies and jealousies of a careless crowd, a crowd he fits into all too well. And don’t forget about Daisy Buchanan, the wealthy socialite who risks her marriage on a chance to relive her past--and who must weigh her desire against the safe, status quo of wealth and privilege.
Last month, I saw Michael Chabon and Ta-Nehisi Coates in conversation at the March 2024 Pen & Podium event in Denver. Both cited Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel as the book everyone should read...and both disparaged the teaching of it in high school. The audience laughed along with their descriptions of teachers who ruined kids’ interest in the novel’s beautiful language and masterful structure by harping on about symbols and themes. Although I admire both writers, I left the event discouraged. Nearly 100 years after its publication, what is left to say about Gatsby and his green light?
Here’s what I know: Gatsby reads differently when you’re 16 and 26 and 36. In high school, I was too confused about the Eggs to pay much attention to the characters. In my twenties, I despised Daisy’s icy selfishness. In my thirties, as a mother, I noticed Daisy’s personal despair and understood her as a more nuanced character. Rather than trying to pack twenty years’ of reading Gatsby into a single one-month unit this year, I’m focusing on my students’ first taste of Gatsby. I’m validating their experiences as readers and asking them to please, for the love of the green light, read this book at least once more in their lives. Same goes for you: You’ll understand the story and yourself differently each time.
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Pub Date: 1925 ( now available in public domain)
Timeline: spans the summer of 1922, with flashbacks
Length: 180 pages (Scribner edition); 9 chapters; audiobooks run around 5 hours
Narrator: Nick Carraway, 1st POV
Fun Facts: The novel didn’t receive great reviews when it was first published, despite Fitzgerald’s earlier successes. It was “rediscovered” after being sent in pocket editions to American WWII soldiers.
Pairs Well With: Rules of Civility by Amor Towles; So We Read On by Maureen Corrigan
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Eating and drinking together symbolizes connection and friendship. Many scenes in the novel revolve around these activities. Choose one to reread. How do the characters interact? What is the mood in the scene? If you compare it to a different scene with food and drinks, what new understandings do you have about the characters?
Think back to a time in your life when you hosted or attended a party that went south. Maybe your family couldn’t stay off of politics at Thanksgiving, or maybe you and your friend had a disagreement. How do you think the setting impacted that moment for you? What similarities or differences do you see in the novel?
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The Great Gatsby resonates on a deep level because Fitzgerald took such care to create parallel scenes throughout the novel. For instance, compare these two moments:
Ch. 1: “The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon.”
Ch. 7: “Daisy and Jordan lay upon an enormous couch, like silver idols weighing down their own white dresses against the singing breeze of the fans.”
Both scenes take place in the same room, but their tone varies drastically. In ch. 1, Daisy and Jordan are depicted as light and carefree. By ch. 7, they are sagging and weighed down. At this point in the book, Daisy is hiding her relationship with Gatsby from Tom. Her fine clothes and fancy surroundings can't save her from her hypocrisy and dishonesty. We feel the change in her character more fully because Fitzgerald echoes the original scene in which we saw her as happy and innocent. What other parallel scenes can you find?
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Prompt #1: The novel is narrated from Nick’s point-of-view, but in chapter 4 Fitzgerald hands to voice to Jordan Baker for a few pages:
“One October day in nineteen-seventeen—(said Jordan Baker that afternoon, sitting up very straight on a straight chair in the tea-garden at the Plaza Hotel)—I was walking along from one place to another half on the sidewalks and half on the lawns.”
Write a scene from the 1st POV that includes at least two characters. Put them somewhere ridiculous: on a rollercoaster, in a cave, under the sea. How did they get there? What do they think and feel about it? At the end of the scene, rewrite it from the other character’s perspective. Think about aspects of the event that the second character may have interpreted differently than the first.
Prompt #2: Read this passage from the end of chapter 5. Then choose one of the prompts to the right for a “quickwrite.”
“As I went over to say good-by I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
As I watched him he adjusted himself a little, visibly. His hand took hold of hers, and as she said something low in his ear he turned toward her with a rush of emotion. I think that voice held him most, with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn’t be over-dreamed--that voice was a deathless song.”
Start writing with “As I watched…”
What happened in your life five years ago? How did you respond to it then? How would you respond to it now?
Write about what it means to “tumble short” or to have an illusion of “colossal vitality.”
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One of my favorite sentences occurs in ch. 4 during Jordan’s story. After describing Daisy’s emotional breakdown the night before her wedding, Jordan says:
“Next day at five o’clock she married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver, and started off on a three months’ trip to the South Seas.”
This line says so much about Daisy’s character. Consider the connotation of “shiver,” which is associated with fear or excitement. Here, Daisy feels neither about her wedding. She is poised and lovely, the flawless debutante-turned-bride. And notice how Fitzgerald drops the article “the” from Jordan’s sentence. It creates a more conversational tone and lets us feel we are eavesdropping on this conversation. Try writing an imitation sentence in your work-in-progress.
Access a printable PDF here.
