"The Great Gatsby" Novel vs. Film

In regards to the new re-make of The Great Gatsby, there were many close similarities betweent he book and the film. The movie makers did an excellent job in creating a world ideal for the story to blosson in. The characters for both the film and the book shine; though there are some characters that I had pictured differently. Nick, for instance, never came across to me as the major recovering alcoholic that he is portrayed as in the beginning of the movie. When we meet Nick, he is a slob, with a doctor questioning him in order to regain some of Nick's mental health. The doctor decides that the best thing to do is for Nick to write out something that made him happy, or something that was incredibly important to him. In the beginning of the novel, Nick mearly comments and introduces his story. He mentions on page one, "In consequence, I'm inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores." Nothing particularly about this sentence reveals anything of a crazed, deterred man; if anything, it reveals that Tom has grown from his experiences with Gatsby.

As for things from the movie that I agreed tremendously with, I thought it was a refreshing change of pace to see the story told from something other than first person point of view; I am glad that the screen writers kept the story from Nick's perspective because it leaves the audience guessing at Gatsby's past. I also found it interesting how in one of the first scenes that we see Gatsby, they only show his sillouette. We see a ghost of him in a window of his mansion, and the back of his body when he is standing out on his dock, reaching for the green light at the end of Daisy's dock across the bay. Not until at the party, when Nick discoveres what Gatsby really looks like, do we learn for ourselves what he looks like. I enjoyed the part in the movie where there is a specific quote/description out of the book when Nick is commenting on Gatsby's smile:

                  "He smiled understandingly -- much more than understandingly. It was 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, and assured you that it had the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey."    (Page 48)

The part of the movie and book that affected me the most is Gatsby's death. In the novel, we get a sense that Gatsby was to a point where he felt that all his efforts on Daisy had been wasted. When referring to a phone call from Daisy, "I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn't believe it would come, and perhaps he nolonger cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. (pg. 161)" In the movie, Gatsby was awaiting the phone call from Daisy for the very last second of his life. There may have been a chance that he doubted her, but when the telephone rang and his servant picked it up and Gatsby was getting out of the pool, his expression was relief; he expected the call on the phone to be from Daisy. In the moment where Gatsby is shot in the movie, it is actually Nick who had called on the phone, not Daisy. In the novel, Nick appears with a chauffeur, butler, and gardener to see the carnedge of Wilson and Gatsby near the pool. But the biggest difference from the aftermath of Gatsby's death in the novel and the movie, is that Gatsby's dad comes back for Gatsby's funeral. In the movie, no one appears, no one cares enough for Gatsby but Nick to come back to Gatsby's mansion and pay their last respects. In the novel, Mr. Gatz travels to his son's mansion to see him one last time, saying that: "He had a big future before him, you know. He was only a young man, but he had a lot of brain power here. (Pg. 168)" I feel that bringing back Gatsby's father adds a sense of finality and completeness to Gatsby's life, but in the movie, you just feel that poor Gatsby died with no one who loved him.