Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther . .. And one fine morning —— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

We are starting off Classics Week with one of my favorite books of all time - The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. On the surface, the Great Gatsby is simply a failed love story between a man and a woman. However, the book is so much more than just that. Through the short timeline of the book set in the summer of 1922 in New York, the book manages to paint a very vivid picture of 1920s America relating to moral values such as greed, consumption, and pleasure. Fitzgerald gives us a deep look into the upper class during this era. It follows Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate from Minnesota moving into the West Egg, a neighborhood for people with newly found wealth in New York.

Fitzgerald’s writing really comes to life in this book. You can visualize these parties on the outskirts of Long Island. You can almost feel the car rides from Long Island to Manhattan. He portrays social trends such as cynicism that resulted from the war through conversations between the characters. He also does an excellent job presenting ideals of some large aspects of this era - the idea of love, marriage and class.

The key focus of this book is the American Dream. To Fitzgerald, the American Dream was about individualism and discovery. He points out that during this time, the shift in social values and corruption for money changed the definition of the American Dream. From the symbolism to the flow to the conversations and themes of this book, this book is simply stunning. It made me reflect on what I thought would make me happy, and the idea of individualism in relation to wealth. Maybe Fitzgerald is right - the American Dream (by his definition) does not exist in the way it did before. Maybe it is still attainable, but not in the way that Gatsby or Fitzgerald might have imagined.

There will be no ratings for Classics Week - they are all amazing :)