The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald - A Short Summary & Review
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - A Short Summary & Review
By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures
A Rite of Fancy Book Recommendation and Review
Nick's New York adventure with the lives of the rich and famous.
A short summary:
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald follows Nick Carraway as he is drawn into the glittering, fragile world of Long Island wealth during the Roaring Twenties. Through his friendship with the mysterious Jay Gatsby, Nick witnesses the excess, ambition, and quiet desperation that define an era obsessed with status and reinvention. What begins as an intoxicating social whirl slowly reveals a hollow core, where money masks moral emptiness, love is tangled with illusion, and the American Dream is both dazzling and deeply compromised.
My favorite quote from the book:
"Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Questions to ponder while reading:
Does wealth diminish character?
Is it fair to hold someone accountable for your memory of them?
My review:
I love this book precisely because it refuses to romanticize its own decadence. The parties, the clothes, the money, and the recklessness are intoxicating, but Fitzgerald makes sure you see the cost. Beneath the glamour, people are trapped by their own illusions, clinging to versions of themselves that no longer exist. There’s something darkly amusing about “rich people’s problems” here, but also something deeply sad. That tension is what makes the novel endure. And yes, given the chance, I probably would have been a bootlegger too. Prohibition was absurd, and Gatsby’s world proves that people will always find ways around rules that ignore human nature.
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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.
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