I'm voting yes. Unrequited, or simply lost love driving a man into a superpower of Manhattan all to win the love of his life. It's an incredible journey. I simply love the story. Gatsby's iron will and unrelenting passion is moving, to say the least.
no, good book but no
Shakespeare, Austen, and Hugo all have better love stories. In the history of literature however, I would say that The Great Gatsby is the most important. The ending is almost as far from "happily ever after" as a love story can be.
It's not even in the top 5000. A remote delusional tycoon is illogically smitten with a spoiled flighty insubstantial woman he hasn't seen in years and whose reality (marriage, motherhood, unbearable shallowness) he doesn't recognize at all. Yeah ...no.
"The Razor's Edge" has a much better love story, and the novel is not even ostensibly a love story.
Solid story no doubt, but 'Romeo and Juliet' gets the award.
I agree with the previous posters that, although it's a great book, it is not the greatest love story. Far from it. They are completely out of touch with one another and don't connect on any meaningful level. Far better love stories out there.
I'm sorry the Great Gatsby was never intended to be viewed as a "love story". To be exact the main focus of the story is the transition from Nick's positive view of society to his realization of emptiness of the Long Island culture. The "love story" while central to the plot is not actually a story of love. It is a story of the failure to love. Daisy cares no more for Gatsby than his money. You can see this in that she didn't even have the decency to go to Gatsby's funeral (one where exactly 2 people show up to). Fitzgerald did not create Romeo and Juliet or Titanic. He created a story of hopelessness and the falsity of love.
stupid engineering major wrote:
He created a story of hopelessness and the falsity of love.
Fitzgerald's intent was to show the falsity wealth and with that, superficial love based on wealth. The point of the story was to highlight the moral decay of American society in the 1920's. The pursuit of commercial wealth, devoid of intellectualism, had become the focus of the time. The rags to riches story line became the embodiment of the American dream. Fitzgerald shows how wealth corrupts all that is meaningful in life.
0.00000% wrote:
stupid engineering major wrote:He created a story of hopelessness and the falsity of love.
Fitzgerald's intent was to show the falsity wealth and with that, superficial love based on wealth. The point of the story was to highlight the moral decay of American society in the 1920's. The pursuit of commercial wealth, devoid of intellectualism, had become the focus of the time. The rags to riches story line became the embodiment of the American dream. Fitzgerald shows how wealth corrupts all that is meaningful in life.
I typo'd the "the" I meant the type "that type of".
No
Interesting responses so far...
stupid engineering major wrote:
0.00000% wrote:Fitzgerald's intent was to show the falsity wealth and with that, superficial love based on wealth. The point of the story was to highlight the moral decay of American society in the 1920's. The pursuit of commercial wealth, devoid of intellectualism, had become the focus of the time. The rags to riches story line became the embodiment of the American dream. Fitzgerald shows how wealth corrupts all that is meaningful in life.
I typo'd the "the" I meant the type "that type of".
this^^ the story is not a love story at all.
Screw that, I hated The Great Gatsby.
I nominate Love in the Time of Cholera
great love stories don't have to highlight love in its truest form...sometimes the most captivating are also the most bereft.
No.
I wouldn't call some rich guy banging some other guy's wife the best love tale ever written.
0.00000% wrote:
stupid engineering major wrote:He created a story of hopelessness and the falsity of love.
Fitzgerald's intent was to show the falsity wealth and with that, superficial love based on wealth. The point of the story was to highlight the moral decay of American society in the 1920's. The pursuit of commercial wealth, devoid of intellectualism, had become the focus of the time. The rags to riches story line became the embodiment of the American dream. Fitzgerald shows how wealth corrupts all that is meaningful in life.
That sounds familiar. The heroes of today are the businessmen. In popular culture, there is not much emphasis on art or well written literature, which I think might be a function of human nature more than anything.
The greatest love story of all time is "The Odyssey".
prince albert_ wrote:
I'm voting yes. Unrequited, or simply lost love driving a man into a superpower of Manhattan all to win the love of his life. It's an incredible journey. I simply love the story. Gatsby's iron will and unrelenting passion is moving, to say the least.
When you inevitably write your English Lit 102 final paper using this thesis, you will receive a B or B- depending on how well you write. Your prof will say its "interesting" but doesn't hold up to any rigorous analysis at all.
You've been warned. This is classic English minor mediocrity in action.
The Great Gatsby is a piece of magnificent writing.
The book impacted my life. It is why I am where I am today.
I don't think the book true a love story, however, although could think so given Gatsby's devotion to a dream. His dream ended in failure.
Stubbornly, I think the green light is not illusory, and I have lived to show it. My AP English teacher, an idiosyncratic and whimsical gay man who could not come out of the closet in that era, challenged me, one of the few athletes he taught in the AP class, to go beyond the broken dreams of Gatsby or Faulkner's Sutpen (Absalom). This may sound silly but I was a poor kid with a single unemployed divorced alcoholic mother and a terrifically abusive father attending a school of well off students. This teacher opened up a world of possibilities to me, in a way that running a 4:08 mile in high school never really did. He died two years ago in his 80's without knowing how much he did for me - something I regret. After my father constantly beat the crap out of me in middle school I took to the habit of walking constantly with my head down. This teacher caused me to look up. Literally.
I am from the Midwest and went to a so-called prestigious school in the East. I was really motivated to do well in this school, because I sure as heck did not want the rich kids to think I wasn't smart. I spent my college years like Nick Carraway, as an observer of the rich and connected, and while I did well academically, my experience was largely that of an outsider. Division 1 running didn't help, because it isolates you from other resources and activities in the school. I went on to a top ranked graduate school, and did better there academically than in undergrad, and achieved at a level higher than I did with running at any level. I don't think the chip on my shoulder ever lessened throughout my schooling days, though.
I got married without knowing how damaged and immature I was. The amount of humility required to see just how far I needed to go was significant. I am still married, but it is not easy. I stumbled along and raised two beautiful and successful daughters, with their having academic successes well in excess of my own. They have experienced none of the hardships or burdens I did - and that's a good thing.
There's rarely a day that goes by that I don't think of Fitzgerald's Gatsby and his vision of America, where dreams are made in dark fields of the republic. And in a sense it reminds me that there was some good in the Midwest for me.
I do feel absurd at times ascribing my trajectory in life to a novel and a great teacher teaching it. But there are things are odd, I suppose.