Critical Reviews of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Course
Aspects of Tragedy
Institution
AQA
This document has the differing reviews regarding the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. They are all from online sources, mainly critics who are creating critical essays for the book.
The Great Gatsby Critics
The Great Gatsby: Critical Essay- Andrew Eliot
‘Like the rowboat’s inability to reach the receding light, Fitzgerald recounts Jay
Gatsby’s failure to marry Daisy Buchanan, the girl of his dreams and epitome of old
money’.
‘“the green light” symbolizes Daisy and his dream to regain their past love.’
‘The tale of Gatsby and Daisy is an allegory. Derived from his personal experience with
an ex-fiancé who remarked “Rich girls don’t marry poor boys,” Fitzgerald’s paradigm
delivers the social message that money has broken the American Dream.’
Is “The Great Gatsby” really that great of a
book? - Tim Brinkhoff
‘Mencken complains that Fitzgerald focuses too much on narrative structure and not
enough on characterization — one of the things that distinguishes a great novel from an
interesting story. The Great Gatsby, in other words, is well-told but not impactful. It is,
as Mencken says, “in form no more than a glorified anecdote.”’
‘To us, the setting of The Great Gatsby comes across as an exaggerated fantasy. For
Mencken and Paterson, it was a stylized but ultimately faithful depiction of a reality
they knew all too well.’
‘If The Great Gatsby isn’t great, it’s certainly poetic.’
Critical Overview of “The Great Gatsby” by Scott
Fitzgerald
‘The novel’s events are filtered through the consciousness of its narrator […] who is
both a part of and separate from the world he describes.’
‘From the very beginning of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald set up his eponymous hero
as an enigma: the playboy millionaire with the shady past who can enjoy the frivolity
and ephemera that he creates around him.’
‘He (Fitzgerald) was one of the beautiful, but he was also forever damned.’
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald- The
Guardian (ThePinkElephant)
‘Gatsby holds a dark secret about his past and how he became so great, a deep lust
that will eventually lead to his demise.’
‘The Great Gatsby is in many ways similar to Romeo and Juliet, […] also a reflection
on the hollowness of a life of leisure. Both stories are obsessed with controlling time;
Juliet wants to extend her present […] Gatsby wants to create a beautiful future by
restoring the past.’
‘However, unlike in Romeo and Juliet, the characters in The Great Gatsby are in
themselves very flawed and very hard to sympathise with. But that is the beauty of
the book.’
‘Many consider The Great Gatsby to be depressing because, in the end, those who
dream do not achieve their aspirations. However, the main message that Fitzgerald
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