You’re in high school and your pretentious English teacher who puts on movies to distract the class because they don’t want to teach or monitor bad behavior passes out a book to you. On the cover is a dark sky, a set of eyes and lips, and a green tear. Instantly, if you’re smart enough, you smell something fishy in the air. Nevertheless, you have (sadly) no choice but to read the book since you need to pass this class to move onto the next brilliant level of English (then once you get to college, your professors tell you everything you’ve learned before is useless, but you need to pass to get into college. Ironic, is it not?). You read twenty pages, throw the book against the wall, try to read more, throw it against the wall again, go watch something on TV, get the monarch notes, write the essay based off that, get an A or B, and be done with it (unless college professors hate you and force you to read it again). Such is the tragedy (not talking about the story) of The Great Gatsby.
As you try and read this book, your life will begin to diminish around you. If you’re in High School, any extra curricular activities will suffer due to your mind worrying about what kind of demented quiz with made up meaning and analysis of the story will be in it. You don’t see into any of the allusion or personifications Fitzgerald has put into the clock? You’re not the only one. Video games and prepubescent sex are sacrificed for looking up words and defining them since you don’t know what they mean, idiot. You’ll be quizzed on them too and this is the only class you are taking (according to any teacher or professor), so it’s ok to put 60 words, some not even from the chapters assigned, onto the “quiz.” Try reading it in your free time if you somehow managed to avoid it in school. You’ll see what I mean.
What exactly is it about? Well, this bondsman from Minnethota (Minnesota in their native tongue), Nick Carraway, comes to New York City. He meets Jay Gatsby, a liar who obtains all his wealth through pimping Nick’s old friend Tom Buchanan’s wife, Daisy Duck. Yet, because of his optimism, Nick sees why Gatsby is so great. Yes, you are great for having the optimism of being a fucking crook. You are also great for having an affair behind the back of a friend, but of course, it doesn’t matter because this is the great times, how to really live, yeah! But Tom’s got a lover, so, it complicates things, as usual. So, Nick eventually meets a bitch dyke who lied about her golf score that ends up ditching him at the end, there is a little girl that comes in and is afraid of turning into a ghost because of the excessive powder on Daisy, some Mint Juleps are drank, there is a clock knocked over THAT FOR SOME REASON HAS DEEP DEEP ANALYTICAL SYMBOLISM AND NEEDS TO BE DISCUSSED FOR TWO WHOLE FUCKING HOURS STRAIGHT AND IF YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF IT, YOU’RE A MORON, a suicide, a breast swinging like a latch, Gatsby sick, then overall, we learn that lying stems from this time period and why so many politicians love to do it today.
It’s garbage. If you manage to get past the slow, rocky beginning, you will be rewarded with a bizarre murder suicide finale. Ok, the idiotic characters that Fitzgerald fashioned after his wife and a few of his so-called friends get their just desserts at the end, but still, how is an American classic supposed to be this boring? What’s the appeal? Is it because of all the ridiculous teachers and professors out there that unconditionally rhapsodize about its merits and deep significance only for you (if you’re smart enough, but you’re probably not since you’re reading a review by someone you don’t even know, queer) to later find out it’s all bullshit to cater to an educational system’s curriculum? Lit fanatics who praise the book’s misconceptions of personification, deeper meanings that are meaningless even to a deep analytical thinker should line up to a firing squad. You’re all a bunch of liars and pseudo-intellectual monkeys that give hype to a simple meaning. But since the book is devoted to liars, well, no wonder you worship it. Probably how you got your job at Macy’s in the first place.
You’re probably wondering about the clock rant from before. I’ll humor you and be serious for a moment. Gatsby broke a clock in Nick’s house and this is SOMEHOW supposed to symbolize how time played a factor into each character’s lives. About how time froze between Daisy and Gatsby, foreshadowing his eventual death, all that jazz. Yes, it is incredible and such a fine piece of literary symbolism to show that time factors into everything when even a fucking third grader could easily make that symbolic analogy. The bottom line is, just about every form of Lit major you can find will always go out of their ways to find something out of nothing, much like the useless art student. Because they have no real meaningful talent, they do their best to make up for it with good taste. Now, that isn’t a bad thing, being intelligent is better than being a moron. However, when you overplay it to the point to where you feel that there is a deeper meaning to someone taking a shit, for example, you’re merely being a tool of literal society. You’re trying to use your vast pseudo-intellectuality to cover up the inadequacy that you have no hope for the future due to lack of skills that matter in this world today.
Don’t read this book. It’s a biased view on the rich, successful, and wealthy from an author who sadly had a bitch of a wife. Other books to avoid are Great Expectations, Pride and Prejudice (throw it in the fire), Animal Farm, My Antonita, and anything written by a lesbian/feminist/nazi.
The An0nym0us Man
