The Great Gatsby, a book I've always wanted to read, and I finally found time to finish it recently. This book is very well written, and there is an urge in many places to copy it into a small book! So I especially recommend you to read it. I've given a simplified overview of the book, and more of the text comes from the author himself, but it can also help you read it quickly! However, if you have the opportunity, I still recommend that you read the original book! (Translator: Teacher Li Jihong)
First of all, let me tell you about the origin of this book, the author of this book is francis Scott Fitzgerald of the United States, poet and dreamer, representative of the "Jazz Age" of American literature!
When the author wrote this work, it was a time of great spirits, there were already two masterpieces of "this side of paradise" and "the beautiful and damned", and the beautiful wife had not yet suffered from schizophrenia, had a lovely daughter, and moved her family to Long Island, a place where New York's famous mansions gathered!
At this time, the end of the First World War, the U.S. economy of the automobile industry suddenly emerged, such as the rapid popularization of Ford Motor Company, led to the construction of highways, spawned the development of new industries such as motels, and accelerated urban expansion! The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, approved in 1920, prohibits U.S. states and federal governments from legislating to restrict the right to vote of any citizen because of gender factors, and American women are given the right to vote! Culturally, jazz has emerged! It is worth mentioning that at this time, the United States is still under Prohibition! Therefore, some businessmen have taken up alcoholic beverages and disguised themselves as medicinal alcohol to sell in pharmacies to seek profits!
However, when the novel was published in 1925, it did not cause a great sensation because it was too close to the times. It wasn't until 1943 that the book was published in large quantities in the form of the Wartime Book Society that more readers would know about it! It was also from this that The Great Gatsby began to conquer the book market and the classic road of literary criticism!
Why is it that this book with less than 100,000 Chinese characters was not cherished in the early days of being put on the market, but became a classic long after? There are three reasons: First, it recreates the social atmosphere of the "lively 20s", such as the depiction of cars and telephones! Second, it accommodates new social trends, namely the emergence of women's independence and new family ethics and the prohibition system. Finally, it is Fitzgerald's placement of the character's life state and psychological activity, even if it is seen now, it is very easy to resonate! The book is also one of the first literary works to critique the American Dream.
The above is the relevant background introduction, the following to start the text!
The book is written from the perspective of a third-person me, who was taught by my father to be a "person who never judges others casually," "I don't want to know about other people's privacy, and if someone wants to talk to me, I usually pretend to be sleepy, busy, or absent-minded." "But there is also a limit to my generosity, and the behavior of others may have a basis for the rock to be reliable, or there is a reason why the mud cannot be relied on, but once it is too much, I will not care about the reason behind it"! "I wish the whole world would put on a military uniform and always pay homage to morality!"
The heroine of this article, DaiXi, is a distant relative of mine, and Tom is the one I met in college. Shortly after the war, I spent two days with them in Chicago. Now they had suddenly come to the east, and on a windy but sweltering evening, I drove to visit. Daisy's husband, Tom Buchanan, is good at sports and has a wealthy family that used to spend a lot of money in college. Now that he has reached the age of standing, he is strong, his hair is gray and yellow, the corners of his mouth are drooping, and his appearance is very proud! Dai Xi whispered softly, and the laughter was strange and charming. They had a three-year-old daughter, but that still didn't stop Tom from having a good relationship out there.
The male protagonist of this article, Gatsby, is my neighbor, and I often see him coming out of the shadows of his mansion, with his hands in his pockets, quietly standing, staring at the silver starlight in the sky. He faced the dark sea and stretched out his trembling hands strangely. I looked over to the other side of the sea, but saw nothing, only a faint green light in the distance, perhaps the electric light on the dock of whose house.
Tom took me to meet his girlfriend, whose name was Meadow. She was in her thirties and a little fat, but she looked very comfortable like some fat women. When I first met her, she was wearing an oil-stained dark blue crepe dress, and her face was not beautiful, but I could tell at a glance that she was very energetic, as if the cells in her body were constantly burning. Her husband worked as a car repairer and used car dealer and opened a "George Wilson Auto Repair Factory."
In conversation with her and her sister Catherine, I learned that she had been deceived by Wilson. Originally she thought he was a gentleman, a very cultured man, but then it turned out that he was not even worthy to lick her shoes, even the wedding dress was borrowed by Wilson... Later I wanted to go out, but whenever I wanted to say goodbye, I would be entangled in tongues. I was both inside and out, and I felt mysterious and disgusted at the same time about this fickle life.
Meadow also told me about her first encounter with Tom. It was filled with false laughter, snooze, the faint barking of puppies, and fierce quarrels.
Later, the first time I went to Gatsby's house, I believe there were not many people who were actually invited that night, and I was one of them. A lot of people don't get an invitation — but don't come uninvited. Sometimes they had never seen Gatsby before they came and went, and it seemed that they thought that a heart eager to attend a banquet would be enough to serve as a ticket!
They whispered, some said he had killed people, some said he might have been a German spy during the war, and some said he served in the U.S. Army during the war.
But I haven't met Gatsby either, and I don't know what kind of person Gatsby really is. In the middle of small talk, I met a man who told me he was Gatsby! I couldn't help but scream, and the Gatsby I had been trying to find was right in front of my eyes, and I quickly apologized for my recklessness. But he smiled sympathetically, a very rare smile that makes you feel very comfortable, and you can only meet four or five times in your life. It is specially prepared for you, as if among all sentient beings, only you make him feel involuntarily liked. I thought Mr. Gatsby was a middle-aged man with a full face and a pig's head and a pig's brain.
My relationship with Jordan Baker also started out with the pleasure of being in and out with her, because she won the golf championship and everyone knew her name. But then my feelings changed. In fact, I did not fall in love with her, against her having a kind of gentle curiosity. The world-weary and proud face she had shown the world hid something. She instinctively avoids men who are smart and cunning, she is hopelessly dishonest, she cannot bear to fall behind, for which she has learned all kinds of deceptive tricks from an early age. But I think this is nothing, women love to lie is not a particularly serious shortcoming.
The number of visitors to Gatsby's house continued to flow, and celebrities and dignitaries returned to the villa with their wives or mistresses for a banquet. I had also attended his banquet twice, but this was the first time he had visited the House. At nine o'clock one morning at the end of July, his luxury car pulled down a rough driveway to my doorstep, and a three-tone horn emitted a beautiful music. He invited me to go into town with him.
Although I've talked to him about five or six times in the past month, he's very close.5 I thought he was a mysterious big man, but now I think he's just the big boss of some luxury restaurant next door to my house.
But this time with the car made me feel very embarrassed, and he wanted to stop talking. He was ready to talk to me about his life. Then he said he was going to ask me for a big favor today. As for what Miss Baker would tell me in the afternoon, because he already knew that in the afternoon I was going to have tea with Miss Baker.
Miss Baker told me a story about a young lieutenant and a famous lady who fell in love with Dai Xi. But in the end he was going to go overseas, and she wanted to say goodbye to him for the last time, but she was stopped by her parents. She didn't speak to her family for weeks and never made friends with anyone in the army.
After that she married Tom Buchanan, the one who gave Daisy a $350,000 pearl necklace on their wedding day. Although half an hour before the bride's outing party began, she took a letter, drank a lot of wine, and threw away the pearl necklace and cried out, "Dai Hee has changed her mind"!
We decanted her, let her take a cold shower, and half an hour later, the pearl necklace hung around her neck. At five o'clock the next afternoon, she married Tom Buchanan casually and set off for a three-month trip to the South Pacific. In April of the following year, Dai Hee gave birth to a daughter.
Finally Jordan told me if I could find an afternoon to invite Daisy to my house and ask him to sit down.
It turned out that I had waited for five years, bought the mansion opposite DaiXi Bay, held a banquet, and given starlight to moths who came and went as they wanted to go- so much effort was wasted, just to be able to "sit" at a stranger's house one afternoon! I asked why I wouldn't just ask Baker to arrange for the two of them to meet, and Miss Baker said, because my house was next door to Gatsby, and he wanted her to see his house.
When I went back that night, I almost thought my house was on fire, and after turning the corner, I found that it was Gatsby's house, brightly lit from the tower to the cellar. I had told daisy to come over tomorrow, and he said he didn't want to cause me trouble, but he wanted to mow the lawn first. Maybe as compensation, he said he could take me into business and make money, but I knew he just wanted to give me benefits, so I had to stop his tongue as a refusal.
The next day I called Dai Hee to come to my house for tea. But it was pouring rain that day, and one man said Mr. Gatsby had sent him to cut the lawn for me. It occurred to me that I was asking the maid to buy some teacups, lemons, and flowers. But it seems to have been bought for free, because at two o'clock in the afternoon, Gatsby sent all kinds of exotic flowers and plants, as well as countless vases. After another hour, the front door opened nervously, and Gatsby, dressed in a white flannel suit and a silver shirt and a golden tie, hurried in, his face pale and his dark circles heavy, apparently sleepless last night.
After half past three, the heavy rain gradually stopped, turning into a thick damp fog, occasionally sprinkled with a few drops of dew-like light rain. Gatsby stared blankly at a copy of Clay's Economics, and every time the maid's footsteps stomped on the kitchen floor, he looked out of the foggy window in shock, as if there were a series of shocking things happening outside that were invisible to the naked eye.
Finally he suddenly stood up and hesitantly told me that he was going home, "No one is going to come for tea, it's too late." "Don't be silly, it's still two minutes until four o'clock." He sat down with a weeping face, as if I had forced him. Just then, the sound of car engines sounded on the path of my house. We both stood up at once, and even I was a little nervous.
A huge convertible drove to the driveway under the tree and stopped. DaiXi's face was tilted under the lavender-colored tricorne hat, and with a bright smile, she looked at me with delight, "Is this where you live, my dearest cousin?" Her muffled voice was uplifting, especially beautiful in the drizzle.
We walked in, and there was no one in the living room. She turned her head, and someone was knocking softly on the front door. I opened the door, and Gatsby, with a dead face and heavy hands in the pockets of his shirt, stood in a pile of water, staring miserably into my eyes. Still in his pockets, he took three steps and made two steps from me into the foyer, then went into the living room and disappeared. My heart thumped, covering the front door and blocking out the gradually heavy rain.
They finally met outside, and although it was awkward at first, the situation soon improved. They are finally immersed in the joy of reunion again!
From then on, Mr. Gatsby stopped hosting banquets, and the people who came here drove into his lane full of hope, and in less than a minute they left in disappointment. He fired all the servants in the house. He needs servants who can't gossip—Dai Hee has been coming a lot lately.
Gatsby called me and was entrusted by Daisy to invite me to Dinerse's house for lunch, and Miss Baker would go too. It turned out that they were actually going to carry out Gatsby's plan in the garden that night- to make Dehee and Tom break off from each other.
This time the meeting was very unfriendly, everyone seemed to have a lot of anger, and the sweltering weather exacerbated this irritability. Daisy said to go to town. Tom then quickly chimed in. But Dai Xi said that he could not go, but there was no choice but Tom insisted on going.
Tom also had to swap the sports car with Gatsby. So we sat in the living room of a suite in a Hotel in Guangzhou. It's still hot. Tom treats Gatsby with suspicion and insult, and Daisy smiles strongly. Tom and Gatsby quarreled, and the scene was out of control. Gatsby asks Daisy to admit that she never loved Tom, and Daisy bitterly confesses that it is not the truth.
Later, Tom asks Daisy to take Gatsby's car home, and there is a car accident on the way - Tom's lover is killed.
Later I learned that it was Daisy who was driving, but Gatsby was reluctant to tell the truth, and I asked Gatsby to go out and hide from the limelight first, but he refused. He also has to guard Daixi at night to prevent Tom from hurting Daixi. But I saw in the glimmer that Tom and Deshe didn't argue, but rather seemed to be plotting something. But Gatsby still insisted on standing here until Daisy went to sleep.
Then something bad happened, Wilson killed Gatsby and then committed suicide! There are all kinds of news about this matter on the report, but none of this matters. The thing that disappointed me the most was that I was the only one on Gatsby's side, and I was the only one. I searched many times for the man Gatsby cared about the most, but the phone was delayed, but she and Tom had gone out early that afternoon with a lot of luggage. Didn't say when they'd be back, and didn't know how to find them.
Then I met Gatsby's father, who gave me a worn-out book with Gatsby's schedule. He didn't want to close the book, but read each item out loud and looked at me eagerly. I think he was quite expecting me to copy this form down and use it for myself.
Jordan and I are also separated, maybe I dumped her, against her or a little reluctant, but also feel very sorry.
One afternoon at the end of October, I met Tom Buchanan, and he held out his hand, but I didn't want to shake his hand. I can't forgive him or like him, they're selfish and indifferent people, Tom and Daisy – they break things up, ruin other people's lives, and then turtle into money, huge indifference or whatever makes them fly and get along, let others clean up the mess they left behind...