THE GREAT GATSBY- First impressionsAura Simina, Mironas

While reading the first three chapters of The Great Gatsby written by F.Scott Fitzgerald, many questions that I’ll try to explain further on came to my mind. In addition to that, the first impressions I had of this initial part of the story are similar to the ones I have each time I sense I am reading a novel that contains more than a simple, straight story written mostly to entertain us. So I believe the writer has intended to show us in his writing through the lives and happenings of the characters, some values, morals and teachings altogether with some criticism of the society of the period the story belongs to.

So, firstly, talking about the narrator, when I began to read I was surprised to see the narration was in first person which is not so commonly used, comparing to the frequently-used third person narrator. I feel that when the story is being told by one of the characters who is involved, the narration feels closer to us as reading a person’s diary which I sometimes prefer but that also implies that the narrator doesn’t know all the details of the story and it adds more mystery to the plot which give me a sense of eagerness to finish as quickly I can the reading. Besides that, I felt being almost next to the narrator inside of the story because I’ve learnt about all (almost all) of the events at the same time as him. Also the little yet effective and intelligent sense of humor in which the narrator tells us some details, made the story reading process lighter and nicer.

Secondly, while reading I thought I had to knew as soon as possible who Mr. Gatsby is for real. Many characters described him in many different ways but all seemed to me just unfounded rumors. They felt to me like an interesting way of adding mystery to the plot meant to keep us on reading until the end to discover if they were true or not. Besides that, all the rumors being bad things about him, made me think about reversed psychology, meaning that at the end of the story (maybe) we will be taught that those rumors were absolutely false and Mr. Gatsby is to be a good person only having been surrounded by misunderstandings.

Thirdly, regarding to the other characters, I felt there were too many people introduced in a short period of time, and all of them had their own different stories which made me feel a bit confused. Therefore I had to slow down on my reading and make a list of the characters with a short description of them in order of appearance just not to get lost on what was going on. I also felt that the narrator kept on going back and forth from one to other in what seemed to be to me an incoherent or randomly order. In fact not all of them seemed to be given an important role on the development of the plot although I have to go through the entire novel to make such a definitive affirmation. Of course I am sure the writer wouldn’t put there unnecessary things just to make the readers get lost or to fill pages but at least I wished all those people or at least their stories were introduced in a slower or clearer way.

Fourthly, I noticed some things about what we are told about the upper-classes. On one hand, the story is supposed to be settled after a period of war as we are told at first by the narrator, but is has shocked me how the high society is described: they were going on with their lives as if nothing had happened, going to and coming from parties and other social acts. That gave the impression they were not affected by all the suffering and sadness of the previous years. But maybe that’s the point of the story: to criticize such things. Maybe the author wants to describe they behaved in such a manner, because the war and its consequences were barely felt by the upper-class and it

affected mostly the ones below them. Or it could also be that the people used those social acts merely because they wanted to forget about the war.

On the other hand, there’s a highlighted subject within the upper-classes world and that is the description of the marriage and love. No fidelity or honesty or love is to be found between the spouses of marriages in which “Neither of them can stand the person they’re married to” so they “secretly” meet other people’s spouses although everyone seems to know about those whereabouts.

Finally, one thing that makes me want to finish this book sooner than later is to know whether the narrator is the main character therefore he is changed or helped by this mysterious Mr. Gatsby or at the end it will result in a fly-on-the-wall narration in which the real main character is to be Mr. Gatsby and Mr. Nick Carraway just tells us about him as an observer. I would say, as for now, the first option is more plausible since we are told too many things about Nick and too little about Gatsby. Nick’s past and the fact that he might have a love story with Miss Baker in the next chapters are some examples of why I prefer to think so.

In conclusion, I think the writer’s purpose goes beyond telling us an interesting story about the life of Mr. Gatsby or Mr. Carraway or any other character, but more of describing in a critical and realistic way how he understood the society of that time and also to criticize their shameless behavior on such a sensitive period of time. All the ingredients described above makes the story a not so easy reading I would thought it would be in the first lines that start similar to the classical “once upon a time”, because the narrator starts describing his background. Nonetheless it changes to a not-so-typical narration that I hope to be able to understand and enjoy at the end.