Rating: 10/10
The Great Gatsby is the first novel I recall reading that totally blew me away. The plot itself is nothing crazy, but it was the poetic prose and incredible imagery that made me always eager to read on. Some of my favorite lines:
- “the tuning-fork struck upon a star”: this scene is a beautiful moment that really highlights just how much this single kiss meant to Gatsby. One can imagine just how loud, but also pure, a tuning-fork struck upon a star would have to sound, perhaps meant to mimic a wedding bell as he weds “his unutterable visions to her perishable breath.” This moment also hearkens back to the motif of moonlight, contrasting its pure shine in this past moment with its gaudy illumination of Gatsby’s parties in the present.
- “it eluded us then, but that’s no matter…”: so much is added to this concluding sentence by its rhythm and the slant rhymes formed by “matter”, “faster”, “farther” then cut off by the final em dash. This structure parallels the content of the sentence itself, constructing a rhythmic crescendo that cuts off right before the “orgastic” climax and leaves the reader to continue beating on alone, “borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Despite its setting in real life, this novel is doubtless the most fantastical I’ve ever read.