Cliff Notes for The Great Gatsby

Study Guides

Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (Cliffs Notes) List Price: $5.99 Sale Price: $2.16 Used From: $0.74 Average Rating:

Description

A fascinating and tragic story of a man obsessed with the idea of success in America. Gatsby's singularity of purpose makes him a caricature of many American ideologies, all told in a spectacular, artful narrative.

Features

• ISBN13: 9780764586019
• Condition: New
• Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

Reviews

Received quicker than expected. Quality was great, just as if I bought brand new from a bookstore. would definitly purchase thru them again.

Here is an honest review of the book for what it is, not the ethical and educational implications of reading this book. In terms of the educational value received from the book, it's not too bad. Although their vocabulary isn't as great as the vocabular sparknotes employs, their guides seem to colloquially explain the subject material, which is the purpose of the book. I bought the book because I was at Target and needed a guide for an upcomming test where I wouldn't have internet access the nights before (I usually use sparknotes because it's free), and I was surprised by the writing quality of the book. Granted, it's not as good as Fitzgeral's writing, however it does relate the story, which is the primary purpose for a history class. Concerning the people who have condemned this book, they need to understand the multiple approaches to learning subject areas. Currently I maintain a schedule where on good days I receive 6 hours of sleep and on bad a receive 3 to none because of my busy schedule and heavy extra-cirricular activity. Reading cliff-notes doesn't mean we as readers won't look in the book for quotes (for example - writing a paper) to support our ideas. Simply condemning them because they're not the real book is unfair to the book, the authors, and the people that use cliff notes for ligitimate purposes. Overall, it conveys the idea well, however sparknotes does an equally decent job.

I am embarrased that someone is looking at this page and considering reading the cliffnotes for one the the best (and not to mention shortest) pieces of american literature. Try to use your brains for something other than reality television and choosing a fast food joint. Its not all that hard to read this book and understand it. ENJOY!

Stop right now. Do NOT buy this. Buy the actual book instead! I know, I know, crazy idea in this day and age, but Cliffs Notes are exactly what is wrong with the world of literature these days: too many people reading the Reader's Digest version, and not enough actually reading great literature! I mean, come on people, the book is less than 200 pages long. You can read it in one sitting. And it's not even that difficult to understand--the prose is limpid and the plot engrossing. Don't cheat; don't take the easy way out. Do the right thing. Read the book, not the Cliffs Notes.

"Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (Cliffs Notes)" is a great way to help you understand what you're reading, if you're having difficulties. If you're not having a problem reading "The Great Gatsby," this will give you questions to test your knowledge of the book. Of course, you should read the Cliffs Notes AFTER you read "The Great Gatsby," not instead of. I recommend.

Spark Notes The Great Gatsby List Price: $5.95 Sale Price: $19.49 Used From: $0.01 Average Rating:

Description

Get your "A" in gear!They're today's most popular study guides-with everything you need to succeed in school. Written by Harvard students for students, since its inception SparkNotes™ has developed a loyal community of dedicated users and become a major education brand. Consumer demand has been so strong that the guides have expanded to over 150 titles. SparkNotes'™ motto is Smarter, Better, Faster because:They feature the most current ideas and themes, written by experts.\They're easier to understand, because the same people who use them have also written them.The clear writing style and edited content enables students to read through the material quickly, saving valuable time.And with everything covered--context; plot overview; character lists; themes, motifs, and symbols; summary and analysis, key facts; study questions and essay topics; and reviews and resources--you don't have to go anywhere else!

Reviews

Very detailed. Seems to give you all that you need to know and less of what you don't need.

Full-Length

The Great Gatsby List Price: $14.00 Sale Price: $6.95 Used From: $4.72 Average Rating:

Description

Noted Fitzgerald biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli draws upon years of research to present the Fitzgerald's Jazz Age romance exactly as he intended according to the original manuscript, revisions, and corrections--with explanatory notes. Reprint.

In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream. It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.

Features

• ISBN13: 9780743273565
• Condition: New
• Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

Reviews

Great book! I read it once and would love to read it again. I like Fitzgeralds style very much. I highly recommend it.

I always wanted to read The Great Gatsby but for some reason or another it always eluded me. Back in college, almost everyone had read this "great" masterpiece of literature. I'm glad I finally had the opportunity to sink my teeth into this novel and see once and for all what it was all about. The story was wonderful to read and its subject matter was appealing for the most part. The industrial age must of been a sight to behold. The author does an adequate job of detailing the age and the times of West Egg. Although the lavishness and splendor of the many parties that took place in West Egg were nicely detailed, I found the imagery somewhat sparse and lacking detail at times. The author does a great job of portraying his characters and their morals but for some reason I didn't find this in itself to capture my attention. The story line was so-so in my opinion and could of been better. But in the end, this novel was worth the read. I'm happy I had the opportunity to finally have read this book and eventhough slightly disappointed, say that I experienced what it must of been like living in West Egg during the Golden Age.

I'm not sure if it's possible to not like this book. It's eloquently written and interesting. A classic love story, that will remain timeless. If you were forced to read it in high school and didn't like it I suggest a quick revisit to the timeless tale. It was wonderful. I'd recommend it to anyone and since it's a short book it only takes a weekend to get through.

I remember reading The Great Gatsby in my high school English class and thinking it was boring. In retrospect, I think I was an idiot. Reading it ten years later was a truly amazing experience. Fitzgerald lays down some stunning prose and brings a lavish era of American history to life. I was struck with how that culture of excess in the 1920s seemed eerily similar to the mid 2000s. . . and right before another crash, nonetheless. Great book. If you tried to read it once and failed, try again. You won't regret it.

Fitzgerald's insight in this book cuts through the blinding American optimism of the time. Though at the time he wrote The Great Gatsby he could not have foreseen the economic and cultural crisis approaching in 1929, he is clearly suspicious and wary of the culture surrounding him, and the tone of this book expresses that he expects evil will come of it. His characters put their faith and their trust in unstable things- wealth, social superiority, commercialism, the power of culture- and their typical american idealism and ambition makes them reach too far for things they don't have, and they end up losing what they did have. Fitzgerald's narrator, Nick Carraway, is ambitious, but is not blinded by the glamour and excess of the society surrounding him. Nick is the only character who is actually grieved by the tragedies which befall the other characters, because he alone values human compassion above society and ambition. From a Christian perspective, this book shows what happens to culture and the individuals who make up that culture when Christian ambition and even basic humanity are sacrificed for social greed.

Video & Audio

The Great Gatsby List Price: $9.98 Sale Price: $16.99 Used From: $11.92 Average Rating:

Description

Adaptation of the Fitzgerald novel about a dashing enigmatic millionaire obsessed with an elusive, spoiled young woman.Genre: Feature Film-DramaRating: PG13Release Date: 8-AUG-2006Media Type: DVD

This adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, scripted by Francis Ford Coppola, puts costume design and art direction above the intricacies of character. It's certainly a handsome try, and perhaps no movie could capture The Great Gatsby in its entirety. Robert Redford is an interesting casting choice as Gatsby, the millionaire isolated in his mansion, still dreaming of the woman he lost. And Sam Waterston is perfect as the narrator, Nick, who brings the dream girl Daisy Buchanan back to Gatsby. No, the problem seems to be that director Jack Clayton fell in love with the flapper dresses and the party scenes and the Jazz Age tunes, ending up with a Classics Illustrated version of a great book rather than a fresh, organic take on the text. While Redford grows more quietly intriguing in the film, Mia Farrow's pallid performance as Daisy leaves you wondering why Gatsby, or anyone else, should care so much about his grand passion. The effective supporting cast includes Bruce Dern as Daisy's husband, and Scott Wilson and Karen Black as the low-rent couple whose destinies cross the sun-drenched protagonists. (That's future star Patsy Kensit as Daisy's little daughter.) The film won two Oscars--not surprisingly, for costumes and musical score. --Robert Horton

DVD Information

Binding: DVD
Aspect Ratio:
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Brand: REDFORD,ROBERT
Manufacturer: Paramount Pictures
Original Release Date: 1974-01-01
Actors:

• Robert Redford
• Mia Farrow
• Bruce Dern
• Karen Black
• Scott Wilson

Reviews

1. I admit that I'm not sophisticated enough and "learned", but the truth must be said, this movie is just a complete bore. If you're interested in the "The Great Gatsby", please, do yourself a favor and just read the book.

A Classic F.Scott Fitzgerald Novel turned into a Good Movie but not great. It is worth viewing and for the Movie Collectors. ****

The Great Gatsby is a colorful, funny, panoramic book full of penetrating individual character studies and strong opinions about the lives of the wealthy. This movie version doesn't communicate any of the book's depth. The director focuses the movie on Gatsby's and Daisy's brief romance. It is the main focus of the movie. But in the book, their 'romance' is a minor point. It doesn't occupy many pages at all. In fact, one interpretation of the book is that Daisy doesn't truly love Gatsby. Rather, he's just another plaything for this bored rich woman, one that allows her to get even with her brutal husband's affair that he flaunts in front of her before Gatsby shows up. The actors in the movie don't fit the characterization of the book. Bruce Dern portrays Tom Buchanan as weak. Fitzgerald shows Buchanan as a physically imposing, 6'3", 220ib college football star, who turns every encounter into a contest, a contest he intends to win. Dern doesn't show Buchanan's sheer intimidation. Robert Redford is OK as Gatsby, but it's not a hard role, because there isn't much depth to Gatsby. The interesting characters in the book are Tom & Daisy Buchanan and Jordan. Mia Farrow portrays Daisy as weak, unstable and easily upset. Fitzgerald shows Daisy as uninterested, confident and manipulative of situations. This movie is a bust, but it's also 35yrs old. I hope a talented director and screenwriter see the opportunity for a new film interpretation about this magnificent book. - For film buffs, this movie is interesting in that it's a big money movie. Gatsby is released around the same time as Scorsese's & DeNiro's masterpieces of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Those two geniuses to take Jake LaMotta's autobiography, and turn it into a cinematic masterpiece, one that is the forerunner of how films were made for the next couple decades. At the same time, Jack Clayton takes a masterpiece of a novel about dreams and wealth and ambition, the Great Gatsby, and removes all the interesting aspects of the book, and hands us only a tepid love story. It's movies like Gatsby that show what a genius Scorsese is, because he takes everyday material and spins gold.

To see the extent to which the filmmakers misunderstood the novel, all you have to do is to view one brief scene. Recall this passage from the book: -- "About Gatsby! No, I haven't. I said I'd been making a small investigation of his past." "And you found he was an Oxford man," said Jordan helpfully. "An Oxford man!" He was incredulous. "Like hell he is! He wears a pink suit." "Nevertheless he's an Oxford man." "Oxford, New Mexico," snorted Tom contemptuously, "or something like that." -- Tom quips "Oxford, New Mexico" here to mock the notion that Gatsby could have possibly graduated from Oxford. While Oxford University represents the ultimate in upper class respectability to blue-blooded Easterners like himself, anything having to do with New Mexico is no doubt considered vulgar and hopelessly lower class. Tom "snorts" the words "Oxford, New Mexico" because it is literally laughable to him that a nobody like Gatsby would try to pass himself off as an upper class elite. But in the movie, Tom does not "snort" the words. He looks at Jordan with a serious expression and and says "Oxford, New Mexico" in a chiding tone, like a father reprimanding his misbehaving young daughter. In other words, the filmmakers completely miss the point of that little exchange. And if they don't grasp something so obvious, well, they really don't understand the character, Tom Buchanan, do they? And if they don't understand basic stuff like that, they don't understand the book at all, and it shows. Not all is lost. I'll give the movie three stars for all the visuals: the lavishly decorated mansions, Gatsby's huge parties, the chic 1920s attire of the moneyed class...it's all beautifully filmed, looking the way you imagine it does in the book.

An excellent movie I saw when it first came out and thought it was so good, I wanted it in my collection! Terrific acting!!