"Gatsby? What Gatsby?"

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had..."

Oh F. Scott Fitzgerald, so wise for being so young. Did you know he was 29 when his most famous work, "The Great Gatsby" was published? And he was first published at the ripe old age of 24. Kind of makes you wonder if he ate literary Wheaties for breakfast, doesn't it?

All joking aside, I have to say, I love this book. Yes, I did read it in high school and I loved it then too, like most of my peers. It was one of the few understandable books that we read our junior year. I decided that if I read it again now I would probably get more out of it than when I read it 3 years ago. And if I read it 3 years down the road I would, once again, comprehend something else. One major aspect I realized this time: If you don't read the entire novel with the first few pages in mind, you are missing so much about how the narrator sees his fellow characters and how you as the reader are intended to see them. The quote above was taken from the second paragraph of the first page. It is the idea that Nick Carraway, the narrator, lives by his whole life...until he meets Gatsby.

One theme that struck me more than in high school was the importance of eyes. I remember my teacher saying something about how important Doctor Eckleburg's sign was. But now I can see (oh haha, a pun!) that there is a major emphasis on eyes . When a character is described there is always a description of the eyes included. All of this builds up to the scene in which Wilson proclaims that the "all seeing eyes" in the sign are those of God. It should also be noted that the novel is written with a first person narrator. Coincidence? There are no coincidences in literature.

There's more to be said than I could possibly say in one post (obviously since books upon books have been written on just this one novel). If you read it keep in mind the importance of social classes and roles, the prominence of wealth, locations of the characters (Nick tries to escape the west but still lives in West Egg, etc), and all those fun things that make reading a novel just oh so exciting!