Welcome to the first and final Rosende Reads recap for The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald! Rosende Reads is an online book club hosted by actor Alberto Rosende, where we read an assigned book and have weekly discussions on Instagram.
As always, we started the live chat with a bop, this time: “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)” by Fergie, a song from The Great Gatsby 2013 film soundtrack. Check out our Rosende Reads playlist on Spotify for all the live chat songs!
After waiting two weeks to discuss this book, we finally had the chance to dive in and had a long discussion about it. We started talking about all the main characters of the book and how the time they lived in (prohibition-era) affected their actions. Here we meet the main character of the book, Jay Gatsby. An extra, exuberant, extravagant, really rich and lonely man.
Gatsby was in love (many Rosende Reads members would argue “obsessed”) with Daisy, a girl he met five years prior, who is now married to Tom Buchanan and has a daughter. We talked a lot about the toxicity of Gatsby and Daisy as characters but also their relationship. The majority of the members found themselves agreeing on the fact that Daisy was annoying and superficial. Every character, in their own way, was superficial. Even Gatsby, who spent the past five years trying to get rich to look interesting and “worthy” of the woman he loved. Alberto thought that at that point, Gatsby was creepy and definitely stalkerish (I mean, a guy who looks for you for five years straight, throws parties every single night hoping you’d show up, and literally tells you to break up with your also manipulative husband has all the bells ringing!) and that he wasn’t actually in love with her, just with the idea he had of her.
That led to another topic: how both Gatsby and Tom were constantly objectifying Daisy. They both saw her as a trophy, like something to own instead of an actual person to love and care about. Alberto pointed out that the only person who’s ever seen her as a person and never as an object was Nick Carraway, who is the narrator of the novel.
Nick Carraway is a character we also had a lot to say about because not only was he the narrator but he basically was the only real friend Gatsby had and the only one, beside Gatsby’s father, who showed up at his funeral at the end. Alberto said that he didn’t fully trust Nick because during the novel, you find him multiple times saying things like, “I’m the most honest person I’ve ever met,” and Alberto rightfully pointed out that an actual honest person doesn’t need to constantly say it (and to maybe take a look at who’s leading the White House at the moment, someone who says things like “believe me” and “trust me” all the time).
Also, how objective can a description be if we only know Nick’s point of view of the story?
This live chat, Tessa didn’t join in on the discussion much, but we occasionally got some of her insight. While discussing about the “green light,” she said that it could represent the money Gatsby desperately wanted to get to impress Daisy. Someone else said it represented the hope Gatsby had for Daisy. I personally thought it was the light of Daisy’s house he saw from the other side of the lake. It was interesting seeing everyone giving a different meaning to the green light.
We discussed so much that we didn’t have a favorite quotes time, but here’s a few of my favorite ones:
– “He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.”
– “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone…just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
– “And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”
– “Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.”
Next up, we will be discussing The Testaments by Margaret Atwood. Make sure to follow Alberto’s book club account on Instagram for the latest updates @RosendeReads. See you next time. And remember, stay curious.
Got some time? Check out videos of each Rosende Reads live chat here (run by @BaneAndLewis).
A fan-run Twitter account (run by yours truly) dedicated to Rosende Reads updates.
The official Rosende Reads Instagram account (where you can join in on the live chats!).
You can find the full and updated Rosende Reads booklist with all the books we read from September 2017 to the ones we will read in the next months on Twitter here.
