"I don't know where you got the idea that the quality of the novel should be judged by the likeability of the characters" TAKE NOTE GOODREADS REVIEWERS, YOU NEED IT
It's so true. All the King's Men is one of my favorite books and none of the characters are likable. That doesn't make it a bad book, in fact, that is kind of the point of it.
You know, 'The Great Gatsby' fascinated me. I individually despised each and every single one of the characters. (By the end, the most likeable character to me was Jordan Baker. And her most prominent characteristic was blatant, compulsive lying.) Even the character Nick idolized was a glorified gangster. And, as far as Daisy goes, another English teacher at my school came across a group of students from my class reading 'The Great Gatsby', and commented, "You know, I always loved Daisy." When they, in shock, asked WHY, he answered, "I have never met a character more focused on doing nothing."
My personal favourite was the man in the library who says my favourite quote "I've been drunk for about a week now, I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library" And we never get is name and only meet him once but her represents the atmosphere of the party and strange connection that humans feel when they all end up befalling the same broken system I'm British so I can't speak for American's but I've always got the vibe of the fall and delusion of the American Dream is bound to unite you right?
I liked Gatsby because I related to his idealism-unrealistic and out of reach, yet painfully hopeful. I also really liked owl man for his love of books and showing up to the funeral.
I actually kind of liked Daisy Buchanan, at least in the beginning... She's a bubbly, flirty, enthusiastic, almost childlike beautiful woman who feels almost like a childhood crush that continued still into adulthood. Sure, she's often unreasonable and floaty, but as John said, that seems to be almost a ruse, a covering to protect herself from the criticism of society. She has a continuous energy sparking around her, jumping from one topic to the next. I enjoyed her as a character, just not the decisions she made.
Sergeant Pancake I honestly don't understand how Daisy's flirty, light attitude could be used as a ruse for her so-called intelligence. To me, throughout most of the book, she came off as hopelessly ditzy. She ignored most of responsibilities to her family for pretty things and acting recklessly when she finally snapped and killed Myrtle. Sure, she was aware of Tom's affair but it wasn't as if he was making his unfaithfulness a secret. Jordan tells Nick of how he crashed his car with a chambermaid sitting in his front seat mere weeks after his marriage to Daisy. Surely, she got the hint then, right? I can't say that I didn't enjoy reading about her (after all, villians and bad people are always the best people to read about in novels) but I could never shake the feeling that Daisy's overwhelming selfishness blinded her better judgment and her somewhat-prevalent intelligence. Frankly, I felt like Jordan was smarter and no doubt more informed on many things compared to Daisy. But then again, each to their own.
I liked Daisy. I like Daisy. I pretty much feel the same. Her choices were... choices but she as a person was just trying to navigate the world somewhat unscathed I feel. I think she was smarter than she let on.
Redcoat exactly! I read it and was sooo confused ahaha I literally had to ask my English teacher if that’s what it meant lol and she said it could be or could not be and I was like ok...so yes?
Read this in 10th grade english. It spawned the best essay I've ever written, which was four and a half pages on why Nick wasn't straight and was more than likely gay for Gatsby. Got an A on it. No regrets.
Hmm. Interesting take on the parties. I interpreted the significance of them a bit differently, though. To me, the first party wasn’t Tom’s. It was Myrtles. A middle-class party in a middle-class apartment. It isn’t a very pleasant party, and the guests aren't very pleasant people, but if you notice, they’re all described by Nick based on their personalities. Everyone knows each other, and care about each other. When Myrtle gets hit, everyone goes to her aid. Gatsby’s party, in contrast, is more fun and prettier, but much shallower. Nick describes Gatsby’s guests solely by their appearance, and nobody knows each other. They don’t even know what their host looks like. When that guy crashes his car, nobody cares about him. Mostly, they just seem to laugh at him. Throughout the story, I think there is a lot of examples of people with less stuff having more meaning in their lives. The parties are one prime example, but there are others. Regarding the American dream, the theme for me is that the pursuit of the American dream is more significant, and brings more meaning to life, than fulfilling it.
Not only that but, in Tom's or Myrtle's party there's a line like "after the second drink we were on first names" or something similar Whereas in Gatsby's there are entire characters we don't even know the second name of Like that guy in the library Our only information of him is he is a guest of a guest with a forgettable name who has abandoned him in a party, But I suppose it's up to you Jordan actually says "I hate small parties they're too personal" (again not actual quote AT ALL) So it depends on your preference
The "Not all characters have to be likable to be interesting" was something that I was just arguing in a paper. I was in fact arguing, in many cases, it is the traits that make the characters unlikable that makes them interesting and compelling
I think Gatsby's ultimate fallacy is that he, in his often childlike naivité, believes that wealth will lead to love and love will lead to wealth. In that regard he resembles the protagonists of Horatio Alger. He believes that by accumulating enough wealth that Daisy will be his again, even though her interest towards pretty much everything is superficial at best.
+Corristo89 I kind of agree kind of disagree. I think there is only one moment in the novel when daisy reveals her true thoughts, or, rather, actually has her mind made up. That's when she mentions she wants to run away (well, in the movie, I forget if it was in the book, though I know for a fact it was in Trimalchio, which was basically a first version of The Great Gatsby). Gatsby of course can't do this. Whereas Daisy, in perhaps her one moment of clarity, wants to leave the wealth and the life she's lived behind and just run away with Gatsby, Gatsby proves himself to be the one that is too attached to the money and a "respectable" life style. In his quest for Daisy, he fell in love with the lifestyle he crafted for himself to win her over. Which is doubly ironic: That it is the inherited wealth rich girl that is prepared to leave it all behind, and the guy who built up his empire solely to win her over, who can't part with it for his love. The other part of the irony is, of course, it was obvious from the moment she first say Gatsby again, that she still loved him regardless of whether he had wealth or not (since she obviously did not know of his extravagent wealth when she hit it off with him again at Nick Carraway's house).
@@slydessertfox6267 I don't think that he was attached to that lifestyle or wealth, I think it was more about that ambitious dream of his. It was about the vision he and Daisy were attached to it. He wanted to recover the past!
The petals of a daisy is white while the center is yellow. White symbolizes innocent and yellow, in The Great Gatsby, symbolizes wealth and decay. When the white petals fall off, Daisy loses her innocence and all that's left is pure greed. Petals fall off the Daisy.
This video taught me way more about The Great Gatsby than 1 year of A level English Literature did. Why my teacher didn't show us this I don't know. Glad I found it before my exam
I have a couple thoughts about this book. 1. Daisy Buchanan is the original manic pixie dream girl. 2. You could also interpret parts of the book about how the threads that hold the world together are terrifyingly thin, like how Daisy kills her husband's mistress in a strange twist of fate that just happens to be an accident, and her distant cousin's neighbor takes the blame for her. Maybe it's just me, but everyone in the story is almost scarily interconnected. This probably has something to do with larger symbolism that I'm not understanding, though. 3. As it is in many books, the one child in this story shows more restraint than all the adults combined. The one possibly sensible character, oblivious to the manic wealth she survives in, only appears once and as soon as she leaves, her mother makes a comment on how she hopes that her child will turn out more of a fool than she is. This sets off a chain of events so tense that I nearly had to put the book down and stop reading because everything was so awkward. And maybe I'm reading too much into this. But Daisy's child is not aware of the constant, frantic splurging her parents thrive on, which I guess goes along with the whole idea of the American dream and how it drives people mad. That's basically it. I had more thoughts on this book, obviously, but I'm not going to write them all down because that would be stupid.
This book is not the first to create a manic pixie dream girl, but is one of the first to dismantle the idea. At the end of the book, the magic of Daisy has clearly been revealed as allusion and she is definitely not left as a manic pixie dream girl
The manic pixie dream girl exists purely to excite an unmotivated or world-weary man back to work and/or fun. Daisy isn't that at all. She is objectified as the embodiment of the american dream BY GATSBY, but not by the novel. Gatsby is basically wrong - he can't access her just because he 'deserves' to - there are parts of her life that he hasn't bothered to take into account when planning how he'll get her back - like her loving honeymoon with Tom where he carries her down to the water. Gatsby wants to erase all parts of her life in between their first meeting and their last, but he can't. 2. It's not a crazy coincidence that Daisy runs over Mytle. Myrtle and Daisy know about each other and are jealous of each other. Myrtle runs out into the road because she thinks Tom and Daisy are in Gatsby's car together - because on the way into New York Tom is driving the yellow car - it's only on the way back that Gatsby drives it. Daisy doesn't stop - perhaps because her privilege tells her that she doesn't need to and it's not her problem, but possibly because she recognises myrtle as her husband's lover. 3. I'm not sure a five year old can show restraint - she's treated as a toy and she behaves like a toy, and there's nothing noble or ignoble about it - like most kids, she's just responding to her treatment by adults. By the way, I hope I've not come across as over-critical. I think your thoughts are really interesting, I just like debating about literature.
Did you know that Fitzgerald's wife was named Zelda, and that The Legend of Zelda was named after her? One of my favourite author's wife was the inspiration for the title of one of my favourite game franchises.
I remember reading the great gatsby and hating Daisy sooooo much and then realising she is a reflection of myself and everyone else. Youre supposed to hate her because she reflects humanity clinging to power and staus without care for others
The first time I read “The Great Gatsby,” the book I used was an old copy my mom had used in a high school literature class. Throughout the book, she had underlined passages about color. One such passage that has always stood out for me is the scene in which Gatsby is showing off his many shirts to Daisy, who is brought to tears by the sight of those beautiful shirts in all their colors.
“That’s the pleasure and challenge of reading great novels: you get to see yourself as others see you & you get to see others as they see themselves”. John, you nailed it!
So, in a way, when Gatsby finally uses his pool at the end of the novel, it's like that statement in Romeo and Juliet about being unsure if their love was like a flash of lightning or the unending sea...and instead of going into the water at the end of the dock with the green light, Gatsby swims in the artificial pool. I'm not sure if that means that Gatsby chose artificiality over love, or peace in reality over an idealistic love. Either way, Fitzgerald is brilliant.
A lot of people talk about all the characters in "The Great Gatsby" being unlikable, but I'd say that if you look into them a bit more, they're actually the some most realistic fictional characters in a novel. They are very flawed, but when looking at it from an angle, you can feel sympathy for even the worst characters. While Gatsby has an illegitimate business, I still think he's a sympathetic character. There's so much going on all at once that I can see why it can be easy to dislike the characters, but really its their conflict that drives them into doing what they do. Their complicated stories make them realistic, and in some ways, likable.
But Jordan a great character, least intresting but most likeable. She so strong and independent she don't need no staring role in one of the greatest novels in history
I love the fact that you point out that a character doesn't have to be likable to be interesting and that a novel's worth isn't judged upon the character's likability. Another great example of this is Things Fall Apart by Chinau Achebe.
Holy shit, this video is really helping me for my exam tomorrow and I'm really really glad you made those subtitles, for me as non-english it would have been quite hard to understand everything you said and I guess I couldn't have followed you, but with the subtitles it was a lot easier and it helped me a lot understanding the meaning of the book, thanks for that!
Came upon this video after coming across the biology videos to help me in my anatomy class. OK... TOTALLY didn't know that John and Hank were brothers AND that this is the author John Green! My stars!
I think one of the thing i like most about your videos, is how you string a sentence together. Genuinely fun to listen to while still conveying interesting and thought provoking ideas and concepts...thank you
I think what makes this book so great is that there's so much to talk about. I never get sick of discussing different themes, characters, or symbols presented in The Great Gatsby. :)
Yes, those who believe in monogamy find Daisy exasperating. But even from a monogamy point of view, I think the difficulty she has in choosing is understandable. It's pretty damn hard to give up a marriage and motherhood and respectability. Plus, she probably felt at least some lingering connection to her husband, the father of her child. But there's another view, as well, the view that she shouldn't have to choose, that she should be allowed to love two different people in two different ways and be left in peace. After all, that seems to have been her husband's attitude towards himself, right?
I agree 100% with you in moral terms about monogamy, but I think most people's problem with Daisy is not that she has trouble choosing between her husband and Gatsby, but that she takes no responsibility for any of her actions, and she doesn't have to because she's protected by her wealth. She literally gets away with murder, and manipulates Gatsby into taking the fall for her, whilst simultaneously making up with her husband and leaving town with him.
EyeLean5280 everyone contemplates about Daisy’s character most, I find. I also find that most people tend to be like Daisy. Which is probably why people argue over her character most. Some show sympathy, and some show hatred toward her and her actions. One thing I can sum up as a fact between Daisy’s and Gatsby’s relationship that also takes place in real life is this... There are many married people who have lovers that aren’t their spouses. And sometimes they may fall in love with their lovers and even share hopes, dreams and promise them a future together. But these married people also have jobs, children, expenses, a spouse they may even love as well. And the reason for the lover is to fill a void they have in their lives. A void that the spouse, children, money, whatever cannot close. But it’s always been a rarity for the lover to become a permanent part of their lives. Because most lovers are quite temporary. And humans are quite selfish. Most of the time, when one is in love/involved with a married person, they should at least know, that they are always going to come second to the person’s spouse, children, house, money, expenses, job; etc. and that those things will always be chosen over the lover. A rarity for the opposite to occur.
After watching a whole lot of John's videos I realized that he also has an "extraordinary gift for hope"--more extraordinary than Gatsby's because he's not hyper-delusional and actually acknowledges the bad and complicated parts of reality. But somehow he always seems sure it will turn out all right in the end. I often come away from John's videos feeling like his world is not the same world as mine. I wish I could live in a place like that.
"I often come away from John's videos feeling like his world is not the same world as mine. I wish I could live in a place like that." that was too real. I feel that too.
Fitzgerald felt sorry for himself because he wasn’t as wealthy as his Princeton classmates. I just can’t summon up sympathy for Gatsby. The struggles of the new rich for acceptance by the old rich don’t interest me. At least one of my ancestors died in a Civil War prisoner of war camp in Rome, Georgia. I don’t understand why so much of my assigned high school reading was about the angst of prep school boys!
Interesting thing about the car: At the beginning of the novel, it's described as off-white. Its color change is my favorite use of color-symbolism in the book.
4:29 Reminds me of the Gilderd Age. I'm bridging Literature and U.S.A History. The Great Gatsby is so great!!! The Roaring '20s is one of my favorite times of history. This video really does cover alot of the traits and hidden messages that are found in humans all over the world, past, present, and future!
It's only a burn if you have accomplished something praiseworthy by the age of 21 such as winning an olympic medal. Although I dont know you, I think you fall into the demographic of people who lives in the suburbs and enjoy their petty lives. So yeah, I don't think you'll feel life as being anticlimactic. Perhaps, you are just a bored, clueless teenager.
Hi John. I love your energetic review. Gatsby is probably my most favorite novel. Fitzgerald's words often feel like poetry. And, I think this kind of review influences young adults to read great literature. Rather than HAVE to read them. I still think that this is the great American Novel. The Great American Novel no longer needs to be written. May the wind always blow at your back, Ted
I would Like to say thank you. I first learned about this during English in 8th grade and Now I use it for a lot. I recently watched all of Crash Course Mythology within 2 days. and Now I am on to English and Chemistry. Helpful for learning or when you just want something to watch and actually learn something. thank you CRASH COURSE for Everything.
My god John Green, I had no idea this series existed only searched "the great gatsby" for the movie and this made my day, NO my WEEK... no still not enough... this made my month (year is kinda big) :) Much love from Argentina.
Actually, it was Jordan Baker who told the story of Gatsby and Daisy's love. It was during the dinner scene with Meyer Wolfsheim, Nick, Jordan, and Gatsby. This series is still brilliant, Mr. Green! Love your books.
Fricken thank you. I’m trying to read this for a project and I physically can’t comprehend what the author is trying to say. Seeing someone I like and admire explain what’s going on really helps me understand the book. I can’t thank you enough for helping me finish my projects.
I also find it interesting that Gatsby is a rumor until chapter two because i feel that the author did this to describe and explain the other characters before actually introducing the main character which in most cases wouldn't make sense but in this book it just flows so smoothly and rigdy at the same time.
The hollowness of the upper class is a major theme in the book as whole, I think that this is an interesting premise to explore when analysing this book
I think Nick is rich-ish - like he comes from a wealthy family and he has enough to live on without working very hard, but he isn't life-of-leisure-and-luxury rich like Daisy and Tom and Gatsby. I think he genuinely likes Gatsby as a person and believes in his goodness, but also his foolishness. He does enjoy living the rich life because of all the good food and drink and fun and music etc., but eventually he realises how hollow it all is and goes home
I never really despised or disliked Daisy. If anything, I pitied her all throughout the book. It seemed to me that she was just acting a part she thought she ought to play, though never truly enjoying herself. (I guess you could say that for every character, but I sympathized with her most) She was a coward that she wouldn't leave her asshole of a cheating husband, a coward not to own up to her crime, and a coward to flee with Tom after everything was finally out in the open. Sure, she was vapid and shallow, but mostly she just seemed so sad to me.
Please do a literature segment on Tess of the D'urbervilles and Coriolanus. These are the IEB set works and thousands of students in South Africa will watch them. The IEB schools already love your Chemistry, History and Biology videos as many of the topics covered are in our syllabus.
that was a great analysis, very well done! i have a question for you though - do you think it is the objects themselves that are enchanting, or is it the treasured memories they are linked to that are?
It occurred to me that the fact that Gatsby, and Nick to an extent, live is West Egg which may represent the West as a concept. The old money east and the radical, partying west could represent America as a contrast to Europe. What do you think?
I watched the video you made on this book 5 years ago, and they seem similar! I liked this one better because its almost like you perfected it, and you added even more input. The visual effects helped too! xD
I loved Daisy right up until she wouldn't tell her lying, cheating disgusting husband Tom that she never loved him & wanted a divorce. She had her chance of a beautiful fairytale life with Gatsby... Who wouldn't want that?!!!! I'd love the movie re-done starting with the part where she should have told Tom & walked out with The Great Gatsby. Because otherwise its heartwrenching & based on true love that went wrong & ended too soon. But don't we all just live for a few extraordinary moments in time? 🥂
I would like to thank John Green for this video. I had to write about the American Dream on my Gatby test and I drew from this video. My teacher said it was the best essay in the class, and I got full points!
