Comparing The Great Gatsby Book vs Movie

Whenever I see an adaptation of a good book, I walk into the theater or sit down in front of the television and tell myself that I must be prepared to handle the changes made to the story, however unreasonable they may seem to me.  After all, books, comics, movies, television shows, and video games all present good methods for telling a story, but what works in one medium may not work so well in the other.

For example, most books require descriptions of locations, people, and the thoughts in the characters’ heads.  The other mediums that I mentioned are visual- they don’t need to include a description of what Jay Gatsby looks like or how Nancy Drew is feeling because we should be able to see these things through an actor’s performance.  Length is often a problem too- the stories in books can go on as long as the author wants; the stories in television shows and video games need to be long to fill out a certain number of episodes or levels, and movies have to be much more concise to meet a reasonable running time.

But sometimes I just can’t help feeling upset when I see what I believe are unnecessary changes to a good story.  You would never know that Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was a critically successful film if you listened to me rant about it.  Percy Jackson and the Olympians comes to mind too, and I have yet to see a faithful Dracula adaptation that respected Bram Stoker’s original novel.

Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby presented a whole different kind of experience for me.  It has about five direct changes from the book that I can think of off the top of my head, and only one of them is important.  It even has the narrator, Nick Carraway, writing about his experiences as he flashes back to his summer at West Egg, and some of the novel’s text is actually shown floating across the screen as the movie transitions from one scene to the next.

It has to be one of the most faithful adaptations of a book that I have ever seen.

Five American Literature pioneers

Through this entry, we will see five American authors that quit their jobs or ordinary lives to become writers. Most of them started in a short age, and writing short stories having a spark of being a writer. What this writes have in common is that they are Americans and they develop a great career in early literature.

1. Edgar Allan Poe

Born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts, writer, poet, critic, and editor Edgar Allan Poe's tales of mystery and horror gave birth to the modern detective story and many of his works, including “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” became literary classics. "The Raven," which he published in 1845, is considered among the best-known poems in American literature.

Major Works

In late 1830s, Poe published Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, a collection of stories. It contained several of his most spine-tingling tales, including "The Fall of the House of Usher," "Ligeia" and "William Wilson." Poe launched the new genre of detective fiction with 1841's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." A writer on the rise, he won a literary prize in 1843 for "The Gold Bug," a suspenseful tale of secret codes and hunting treasure.

In 1844, Poe moved to New York City where he published a news story in The New York Sun about a balloon trip across the Atlantic Ocean that he later revealed to be a hoax. His stunt grabbed attention, but it was the 1845 publication of his poem "The Raven" which made him a literary sensation. "The Raven" is considered a great American literary work and one of the best of Poe's career. In the work, Poe explored some of his common themes—death and loss. An unknown narrator laments the demise of his great love Lenore. That same year, he found himself under attack for his stinging criticisms of fellow poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Poe claimed that Longfellow, a widely popular literary figure, was a plagiarist, which resulted in a backlash against Poe.

Continuing work in different forms, Poe examined his own methodology and writing in general in several essays, including "The Philosophy of Composition," "The Poetic Principle" and "The Rationale of Verse." He also produced another thrilling tale, "The Cask of Amontillado," and poems such as "Ulalume" and "The Bells."

Curiosities. 

2. Washintong Irving

Considered the first professional distinguished writer in the United States with short stories like "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Washington Irving was influential in the development of the short story form and helped to gain international respect for American literature

As a nineteen-year-old, Irving began contributing letters under the pseudonym (assumed name) Jonathan Oldstyle to a news-paper owned by his brother Peter. His first book, Salmagundi (1807–08), was a collaboration with another brother, William, and their friend James Kirke Paulding. This highly popular collection of short pieces poked fun at the political, social, and cultural life of the city..

An American celebrity

After receiving warm praise from the literary and academic communities, Irving set out on a tour of the rugged western part of the country, which took him as far as Oklahoma. The expedition resulted in three books about the region, notably A Tour on the Prairies (1835), which provided easterners with their first description of life out west by a well-known author. Irving eventually settled near Tarrytown, New York, at a small estate on the Hudson River, which he named Sunnyside.

Among the notable works of Irving's later years is an extensive biography of George Washington (1732–1799), which he worked on determinedly, despite ill health, from the early 1850s until a few months before his death in 1859. As America's first literary star with stories like "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Irving established an artistic standard and model for later generations of American short story writers.

Facts

3. Harper Lee

Writer Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama. In 1959, she finished the manuscript for her Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller To Kill a Mockingbird. Soon after, she helped fellow-writer and friend Truman Capote write an article for The New Yorker which would later evolve into his nonfiction masterpiece, In Cold Blood. In July 2015, Lee published her second novel Go Set a Watchman, which was written before To Kill a Mockingbird and portrays the later lives of the characters from her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Lee died on February 19, 2016, at the age of 89. 

'To Kill a Mockingbird'

Soon Lee was engrossed in her own literary success story. In July 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird was published and picked up by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Literary Guild. A condensed version of the story appeared in Reader's Digest magazine. The work's central character, a young girl nicknamed Scout, was not unlike Lee in her youth. In one of the book's major plotlines, Scout and her brother Jem and their friend Dill explore their fascination with a mysterious and somewhat infamous neighborhood character named Boo Radley.

The work was more than a coming-of-age story: another part of the novel reflected racial prejudices in the South. Their attorney father, Atticus Finch, tries to help a black man who has been charged with raping a white woman to get a fair trial and to prevent him from being lynched by angry whites in a small town.

The following year, To Kill a Mockingbird won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize and several other literary awards. Horton Foote wrote a screenplay based on the book and used the same title for the 1962 film adaptation. Lee visited the set during filming and did a lot of interviews to support the project. Earning eight Academy Award nominations, the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird won three awards, including best actor for Gregory Peck's portrayal of Finch. The character is said to have been based on Lee's father.

In November 2007, President George W. Bush presented Lee with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her "outstanding contribution to America's literary tradition" at a ceremony at the White House.

Interview:

4. Mark Twain

Born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri, Samuel L. Clemens wrote under the pen name Mark Twain and went on to author several novels, including two major classics of American literature: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He was also a riverboat pilot, journalist, lecturer, entrepreneur and inventor. Twain died on April 21, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut.

Personal Struggles

But while those years were gilded with awards, they also brought him much anguish. Early in their marriage, he and Livy had lost their toddler son, Langdon, to diphtheria; in 1896, his favorite daughter, Susy, died at the age of 24 of spinal meningitis. The loss broke his heart, and adding to his grief, he was out of the country when it happened. His youngest daughter, Jean, was diagnosed with severe epilepsy. In 1909, when she was 29 years old, Jean died of a heart attack. For many years, Twain's relationship with middle daughter Clara was distant and full of quarrels.

In June 1904, while Twain traveled, Livy died after a long illness. "The full nature of his feelings toward her is puzzling," wrote scholar R. Kent Rasmussen. "If he treasured Livy's comradeship as much as he often said, why did he spend so much time away from her?" But absent or not, throughout 34 years of marriage, Twain had indeed loved his wife. "Wheresoever she was, there was Eden," he wrote in tribute to her.

Twain became somewhat bitter in his later years, even while projecting an amiable persona to his public. In private he demonstrated a stunning insensitivity to friends and loved ones. "Much of the last decade of his life, he lived in hell," wrote Hamlin Hill. He wrote a fair amount but was unable to finish most of his projects. His memory faltered. He had volcanic rages and nasty bouts of paranoia, and he experienced many periods of depressed indolence, which he tried to assuage by smoking cigars, reading in bed and playing endless hours of billiards and cards.

Samuel Clemens died on April 21, 1910, at the age of 74, at his country home in Redding, Connecticut. He was buried in Elmira, New York.

Some Facts

5. F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota. His first novel's success made him famous and he married the woman he loved, his muse Zelda, but he later descended into drinking and his wife had a mental breakdown. Following the unsuccessful Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood and became a scriptwriter. He died of a heart attack in 1940, at age 44, his final novel only half completed.

'The Great Gatsby' and Other Career Breakthroughs

The novel's new incarnation, This Side of Paradise, a largely autobiographical story about love and greed, was centered on Amory Blaine, an ambitious Midwesterner who falls in love with, but is ultimately rejected by, two girls from high-class families. The novel was published in 1920 to glowing reviews and, almost overnight, turned Fitzgerald, at the age of 24, into one of the country's most promising young writers. One week after the novel's publication, he married Zelda Sayre in New York. They had one child, a daughter named Frances Scott Fitzgerald, born in 1921.

F. Scott Fitzgerald eagerly embraced his newly minted celebrity status and embarked on an extravagant lifestyle that earned him a reputation as a playboy and hindered his reputation as a serious literary writer. Beginning in 1920 and continuing throughout the rest of his career, Fitzgerald supported himself financially by writing great numbers of short stories for popular publications such as The Saturday Evening Post and Esquire. Some of his most notable stories include "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "The Camel's Back" and "The Last of the Belles."

In 1922, Fitzgerald published his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, the story of the troubled marriage of Anthony and Gloria Patch. The Beautiful and Damned helped to cement his status as one of the great chroniclers and satirists of the culture of wealth, extravagance and ambition that emerged during the affluent 1920s—what became known as the Jazz Age. "It was an age of miracles," Fitzgerald wrote, "it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire."

Seeking a change of scenery to spark his creativity, in 1924, Fitzgerald moved to France, and it was there, in Valescure, that Fitzgerald wrote what would be credited as his greatest novel, The Great Gatsby. Published in 1925, The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner who moves into the town of West Egg on Long Island, next door to a mansion owned by the wealthy and mysterious Jay Gatsby. The novel follows Nick and Gatsby's strange friendship and Gatsby's pursuit of a married woman named Daisy, ultimately leading to his exposure as a bootlegger and his death.

With its beautiful lyricism, pitch-perfect portrayal of the Jazz Age, and searching critiques of materialism, love and the American Dream, The Great Gatsby is considered Fitzgerald's finest work. Although the book was well-received when it was published, it was not until the 1950s and '60s, long after Fitzgerald's death, that it achieved its stature as the definitive portrait of the "Roaring Twenties," as well as one of the greatest American novels ever written.

F. Scott Fitzgerald died believing himself a failure. None of his works received anything more than modest commercial or critical success during his lifetime. However, since his death, Fitzgerald has gained a reputation as one of the pre-eminent authors in the history of American literature due almost entirely to the enormous posthumous success of The Great Gatsby. Perhaps the quintessential American novel, as well as a definitive social history of the Jazz Age, The Great Gatsby went on to become required reading for virtually every American high school student, and has had a transportive effect on generation after generation of readers.

Love and madness story: