Not So Great on Gatsby

[PabloQ]

I may be a blasphemer, but I'm not enthralled with The Great Gatsby. I just read it for the third or fourth time in my life and I still don't like it. I think this is one of those works, although written by a famous writer and considered well-written by many, I just disagree with the consensus.
I find this to be a simple, flawed love story of deeply flawed, uninteresting characters. Every person in this book seems to be a completely horrid person. Tom Buchanan is a wealthy jerk. Okay, I get world is full of those and marries his trophy wife, spawns, and gets a girlfriend on the side. Two deeply troubling scenes with this man. The horrible scene where he breaks Myrtle's nose and the second of him in the kitchen with Daisy show him to be both a brute and a coward.
For those who favor the feminist view, have at it with any of the female characters in this work. Daisy? Jordan Baker? Myrtle Wilson? Wow!!
One of the biggest issues I've had with this novel is Fitzgerald's choice to tell it from Nick Carraway's perspective. To a great degree, Nick is not a particpant or a witness to much of what he has included in his story. As a result, I don't trust the accuracy or the quality of what's been told. He strikes me as easily manipulated and if that is true, how am i supposed to believe or trust his story. I contrast him with the narrator's Hemingway used in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms and the difference is striking. Those narrators are central characters, integrated into the story. Even though it's one person's perspective, you see the whole story and all of the action through that person's eyes. I'm not sure what Nick actually saw and what he didn't nor do I understand the source of some the scenes he describes at which he was not present.
Which brings me to Gatsby himself. Isn't he basically a stalker? He spent five years building and living a myth to impress a woman who was not pining away for him. He was delusional and in the end pathetic, sad, and dead. He is one the most tragic heroes in American literature.
I love Fitzgerald. I really enjoyed This Side of Paradise. But I struggle to accept this novel as even his best writing. I don't even accept this as a portrayal of the American dream. It's more of an indictment of the American dream and caveat emptor for over pursuing one's dreams. Nor is it a paramount of the clash between the wealthy and the nouveau riche. I know I'm a minority opinion, but I just don't like this story.
Now tell me why I'm wrong.

[slayton]

Dear PabloQ,

I think you have entirely missed the purpose of the novel. Its intention, as you described, is to be a tragic and flawed romance. The purpose is to dispel the myth interpretation of the American dream proving impossible in modern American society. Gatsby's confusion between the materialistic and idealistic dream, the idea that someone could be "consumed with wonder," seems contradictory but implies the eventual corruption which society imposes.
In reference to your criticism of Nick's subsidiary narrtative, your view epitomises why the narrative is so effective; Nick is supposed to make you question the story, the possibility of romance, the corruption of society and the capability of America to shed its European past. The fact that Nick's narrative leaves the reader unsure of the truth raises questions about perspective, reiterated symbolically through the eyes of morality of T.J. Eckleburg. Furthermore Nick's absence from Daisy and Gatsby's reunion (perhaps the most important moment of the novel) proves Fitzgerald's assertion that the reality can never live up a person's imagination and ideal. However, in the most basic sense your desire to have a happy ending to a story and the issue you find with anything tragic or unfulfilled shows an immaturity and no desire for literature to expose truth at all sort or indeed make any astute observations.

[wessexgirl]

You're not alone PabloQ. I really dislike the novel too and consider it overrated. I know a case can be made for the things that Slayton says, as I'm sure you can see on other threads about the book, but I still really don't rate it as a great novel either. I know you don't have to like the protagonists in a story, but I felt pretty much like you. We don't all have to agree on literature though, or it would get very boring.