A review by kartrick
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

4.0

I'd heard a lot about this book, so I thought I knew what I was getting into, but I was pleasantly surprised. Given how often people cite this book as an epitome of the vice-driven Roaring Twenties, and even sometimes parallel it with today's society, the character of Gatsby himself, and the central plot driving the story and his life, were unexpected. That said, this is one of those books that end on a sombre note and leave the reader in deep thought, about the characters and about one's own life.

I realised there's a lot of subtlety to the story, which I admittedly hadn't picked up when I read it. As someone who regularly indulges in narratives and rhetorics for the importance of having dreams and dreaming big, this book in the moment served as a gentle nudge towards the under-explored question of worthiness of any given dream; of whether the nature of the dream is such that it drives you "higher" and makes you grow outward, encompassing more, or if it drives you further and further within and drowns you; of how finely it balances on the extremely thin line separating arguably irrational yet steely, obsession-fuelled determination, from a usurping irrational, fantastical worldview; of which side the foot falls on more often.

I think this is a story that'll stay with me for a while, and my thoughts on it will probably evolve with time.