The Great Gatsby 1925 Literature

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby is held in a similar regard to Of Mice and Men and Lord of the Flies where a lot of peoples’ ability to appreciate it is hampered by the fact that they were required to read it back in school. Getting through this tiny little 180 page book- hardly even a novel- in one day was a relatively easy task. I think with most 100+ page books it’d usually take at least three, but I last read this book a year ago in an English class where we were reading about 1 sentence a day despite the fact it was Honors English II, ergo I was able to read this book in roughly two hours at a pace of about two pages a minute. The Great Gatsby, though, is a literary treat. Upon reread I noticed the similarities between Nick and Richard Papen (the comparison came to me from the line of The Secret History where Papen calls Gatsby his favorite novel) as reluctant cameramen for the proverbial behind-the-scenes documentary of a glamorous and mysterious person(/group of people in Papen’s case) who quickly finds themself disillusioned with what’s behind the veil of mysticism. The Great Gatsby is THE pre-1940s American novel, even if I find it too short to really leave an impact (A complaint I have with Of Mice and Men, too).