BEST SCHOOL BOOK! by Kayla

BEST SCHOOL BOOK! by Kayla - July 2013 Scholarship Essay

    The best book that I have read for class is also one of my favorite books ever. Okay, so I didn’t read it for a class, but it is a book that most students do read in high school: The Great Gatsby. I had tried at least two previous times to make it through the relatively small book, but I just wasn’t that interested in it. Then my mother, a high school literature teacher, showed me an older movie of the book, and I finished The Great Gatsby within two days. Once I knew the plot it became much easier to read and enjoy the book. What had put me off at first was that I had read the first few chapters and it seemed to me that nothing had really happened, just the daily life of some character named Nick who lived next to Gatsby but never saw him, not to mention that Fitzgerald’s writing was a bit unemotional. A book becomes truly great when its movie adaptation makes people want to read the book, and that is exactly what it did for me.
    The Great Gatsby and all of its wonders were opened up to me, and as I read the book, it became even more enjoyable. Fitzgerald’s writing style was extremely descriptive, but that is not what makes this book one of the best of all time, it is the very fact that, even though the writing style might not be the most desirable, the story in and of itself is truly great, so great that even the 2013 rendition of the book held me captive in the plot that I already well knew.
    It is difficult to begin to describe all of the ways that The Great Gatsby is a great book. The often used theme of romance has a spin to it, not only does The Great Gatsby tell of long-lost love and the rags-to-riches story of a young and in love Jay Gatsby, when meditated upon the underlying themes of hope and greed reveal themselves very clearly. The brilliance of Fitzgerald’s story begins,as most stories’ brilliance begin, at the beginning. Knowing his story will center around married couples that are driven into adultery, and rich people attending parties, but not the funeral of the well known host, Fitzgerald starts the story with Nick telling the reader that his father told him to never judge a person, because you see the present and not the past and not the upbringing and opportunities. In the opening Fitzgerald assumes Jay Gatsby as the symbol of hope, being the most hopeful man that Nick Carraway has ever met or ever will meet. Throughout the book readers can see this when it is realised that Gatsby has moved across the bay from Daisy’s home with her husband. Gatsby never gives up hope that Daisy will chose him, when he reaches out toward the green light at her dock, when he attempts to make her tell her husband that she never loved him because that is what Gatsby has believed the past five years without her, he always hopes that she will go to one of his parties.
    Another reason that this book is my favorite is all of the different forces at work. Greed, the force that keeps Daisy and Tom together, despite all of the disfunction in the family. Unfaithfulness, the force that drives Mr. and Mrs. Wilson apart in the final chapters of the book. The yearning that  Gatsby has to be known as a ‘somebody’ that drives him to make up half-truths about his origin, that eventually leaves him alone, save Nick and Gatsby’s father. It is about the terrible things that humans depend on for satisfaction and security in life and the sacrifices that humans make for that satisfaction and security. In the end, The Great Gatsby is a powerful story about love and loss, and the inevitable human nature to hope when all reason to hope has gone. That is why The Great Gatsby is my favorite school book.