In the book we listen and (sort of) follow Nick Carraway. Nick recently moved to West Egg. A place people who worked for their money come to live (new money). Quite the opposite of East Egg where people who inherited their money come to live (old money).

Like the title suggests (and I also sort of hint to) the book isn’t really about Nick. He (and in effect us, the reader) are mostly witnessing the emptiness that accompanied the Jazz age here in West and East egg. This emptiness comes in the form of people who have recently earned a lot of money and are trying to climb the social ladder by hosting parties. The focus point in this book being, Gatsby. Jay Gatsby. He is the show and the focus of the book.

Gatsby interestingly enough lives in West Egg right next to Nick and that is also how Nick eventually gets to know Gatsby. Gatsby lives in an amazing extravagant house in which he hosts a great many amount of parties where all kinds of rich folks go to. Throughout the story we learn that the only reason Gatsby hosts these parties is because he wants to get close to a woman he fell for before he was drafted into the war. Daisy.

Daisy lives right across the water from Gatsby and is from old money. Someone who is therefore unattainable/unapproachable for someone like Gatsby who only recently became wealthy. Their social status is way different and hosting these parties was his way of raising is his social status high enough quickly enough to get back in touch with Daisy.

However, rather quickly into the story we learn that during Gatsby’s draft Daisy got married to another man she met, Tom. Why she did this you may ask. I honestly can’t remember most likely because she is shallow and kind of lame like most of the rich people from East Egg seem to be.

My opinion#

A unsuspectingly sad book.

Before reading, I only heard sparsely of it and thought it was a happy book about extravagant parties and in a sense it is but also it isn’t. It really quickly shows you how superficial people at those parties were. Which in hindsight makes sense since those parties are only there to display wealth and promote hedonistic tendencies/activities. And Gatsby knew this too. He didn’t care about anyone at those really except maybe Nick and some others. In the end it wasn’t even worth it. Gatsby got killed and Daisy “lived happily ever after”.

I think I would recommend it to others but with the warning of it being different than they probably expect.