Great Gatsby. Good Book.

In the past, I have not been very pleased with the required reading books at school. In Freshman year, we had to read Lord of the Flies and Of Mice and Men neither of which I enjoyed. The others: A Wizard of Earthsea and The Bean Trees were okay, but I wasn't too fond of them. Romeo and Juliet was fine however. During Sophomore year, we read Black Boy, Antigone, Julius Caesar, and Krik? Krak! I disliked the plays especially. The books were just okay. The degree to which I liked the books does have a lot to do with the teacher though.

I did enjoy The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald this year. It has some nice ideas about wealth, artificiality, and honesty. There are a few quotes I like:

"Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, I was with him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without,simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life." (40)

"Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry." (93)

"...now I was looking at it again, through Daisy's eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment." (110-111)

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy-they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made...." (187-188)

I think the last quote really captures the book.