The Great Gatsby

    The Great Gatsby caught me in a fantastic way. Although F. Scott Fitzgerald doesn't write with such a complex style, his development of themes is very interesting. The way the "Lost Generation" writer unfolds his themes is almost that of a soap opera, where you feel you should be gripping for detail around ever corner and page. He precariously sets up this story of affairs with precarious placement, which at times is slightly confusing until 2+2 becomes apparent. I was especially fond of the climax of the book when everyone comes to terms with the very obvious "elephant in the room"; more specifically, the section where Tom shows up to Wilson's Garage in Jay Gatsby's car and it turns out that Mrs. Wilson is murdered with the same car. But it all happened that the murder was suggested to be Daisy, but Jay was shot. It is this kind of  precarious placement that grasps the reader in the drama of the writer.
    Moreover, Fitzgerald's intention was not a drama or intense soap opera. He depicts the images of the bourgeoisie and rich 20's as a very scandalous time and also shows the reality of what the American 20's had become. This book is almost a mockery of old-time thinking, and Fitzgerald is showing the new frontier of the 20's where parties were okay, flappers were a trend, and marrying for wealth and status wouldn't exist any longer--marriage and scandal for love became the right thing to do. Old conservative views on marriage were expiring and Fitzgerald showed this when Daisy blatantly stated that "Rich women don't marry poor boys." This was Fitzgerald's mockery of the idea of marriage and almost this whole book did. No one was happy with the idea of their marriage because it was numb; love was transparent and no longer existent.
     F. Scott Fitzgerald does a very swell job of tickling the idea of satire of old ideals in the 20's while sufficiently entangling the reader into a mess of several lives and affairs making the book into an eventful maze of interest. A soap opera.