The great Gatsby Review

The Great Gatsby, it is not just a title of a book. It sets a tone for the rest of the story, a tone of wonder and mystery. Magicians use great in their names so that they impose mystery, wonder, and awe in their audience. By putting “great” in their names, they make themselves higher up than everyone else. It is like being knighted by the Queen, except that great implies much more wonder than just sir. That is why Jay Gatsby is called the Great Gatsby; there is so much wonder and mystery about him.

  When first hearing the name of this book, a thought came to my mind. That thought was, “Who is this ‘Great Gatsby?’” I began to think immediately that this man was a very rich man, but not only a rich man, but also a mysterious man. I expected this Gatsby fellow to be an older man who was very unpredictable in his actions. I had this feeling that no one would know what this Gatsby did for a living, and that he might partake in illegal activities. I was partly right.

Jay Gatsby was a mysterious man. He comes to us in this story out of surprise. Nick was talking to a man that turned out to be Gatsby, but Gatsby never mentioned his name until Nick said how he still has yet to see this Gatsby. Jay Gatsby floats around his parties, partaking in a few conversations but mostly sticking to himself, which caused wonder about him because some people would not even know it, was him that they were talking to. He would walk around the party, a stranger to everyone yet the topic of many conversations. 

Gatsby was the sort of man that inspired wonder. He was a very young handsome man, who had come into a very large amount of money, and had been a major in the army. No one knew how Gatsby had come to get this money and so many rumors were made. These rumors added to Gatsby’s greatness. They added mystery and intrigue in his character, and they inspired wonder in those who heard them. People would hear the rumors about him and come to his parties to find out for themselves about this Gatsby man, to see what he was really about. Gatsby never denied or confirmed the rumors and so he only fed the fire that created and spread them.

Gatsby wanted this. He wanted to be a man of mystery and wonder in peoples’ eyes. He had created a new name for himself and a new life, and with this new life he could become anyone and anything, and so he left this up to the masses. He let them write his life story; he let them decide what he did for a living, and all the aspects of his life. The human imagination ran wild creating a story about this man, for humans cannot stand knowing nothing about someone, especially someone who is very prominent in the world.

The masses created stories about Gatsby; stories that inspired awe, respect, wonder, jealousy, mystery, and intrigue. No one knew if these stories were real or not, which caused Gatsby to be as much of a mystery as how a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat. This book is about a man whose life was surrounded by mystery, a man who had fueled this mystery so that he might find and impress a woman he had fallen in love with may years ago. She did not know much about him now, and so he was as much a mystery to her as he was to anyone of his guests. He was surrounded so much by rumors and mystery that when he died, almost no one came to his funeral.

 No one really knew much about him and he was such a mysterious man that no one really became close with him. There were only a few close friends that he had and even the truth about him was foggy to them. As far as the party goers went, Gatsby could have been a figure in their imagination, a man made up to satisfy their starving minds. As for his close friends, this mystery about Gatsby made it so their friendships could never become very deep. The Great Gatsby, a title for a man people knew nothing about, a man who could be anyone or do anything because his life story was built and alive in the minds of the masses. That is why this book is appropriately named The Great Gatsby.