The Great Gatsby: Movie and Novel Adaptations

When was the last time you read a book then watched the movie? How about the other way around? Have you ever read a play, then actually seen the play? And while watching it, you find yourself saying excitedly, ohh I think I have read this part in the book, but why is the movie different from what I imagined!. Well you are not alone.That is exactly how I felt after reading Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby.

The only thing I could say in that very moment was, My heart hurts. The book was so good that even the classic Romeo and Juliet couldn’t compete with this tragic love story that is all about delusion and failure. But it happens that I loved the book so much I watched the movie and found some little details missing that could confuse the reader and set apart the book from the movie.

Let’s set the stage. Nick is Daisy’s cousin; Daisy is the woman Gatsby fell in love with. Tom is Daisy’s husband and he is cheating on Daisy with a woman called Myrtle, and remember Myrtle has her own husband. Gatsby the main character is the richest man in new york. This tragic love story took place in Long Island, New York City in the Early 1920’s. Daisy’s cousin Nick narrates the book as Gatsby’s neighbor and unwittingly becomes Gatsby’s accomplice in his mission to win Daisy to his side. The movie presents Nick telling the story while committed to a crazy house for alcoholism, this was not in the book. The books claim that Nick has been drunk just twice in his life while Nick’s institutionalism and alcoholism are absent from the book.

Well Nick does party with Daisy’s husband and his mistress Myrtle. In the book, he doesn’t end up drugged tripping or making out with the mistresses sister. Instead the book has far more interesting turn of events, in that Nick gets strung ends up in an elevator with another man and wakes up in that man’s apartment in his underwear with nothing else explained.

The music choice for the movie was odd. The book took place when jazz was still a thing, which was in the early 1920’s however, in the movies they seems to be playing Bang Bang by Will.iam, a pop song in one of Gatsby party that was released in 2013. Characters dress in flappers dancing to Fergie, A little party never killed nobody, hich is not written in the book.

Daizy’s husband becomes the movies villain, he’s unfaithful ,violent and he instigates Gatsby’s murder and weakens Daisy to the point of making her a victim but in the book it’s not so simple Daisy’s husband is indeed shallow, rich ,brutish and a cheater but he doesn’t point the finger at Gatsby when his mistress is killed.

Spoiler alert Daisy accidentally kills her husband’s mistress while driving Gatsby’s car. Unfortunately Gatsby is blamed for the murder, while Daisy and her Husband Tom ran away to france. The mistress’s husband rushly came to the conclusion that his wife was having an affair with Gatsby and resolves to kill him, while in the movie, the mistress husband did killed him with a gun but the movie shows tears jerking scene of Gatsby believing right before his death that he’s to be reconciled with Daisy, because Daisy was never in loved with Tom when in fact it’s only Nick calling to check on him, so he’s at peace the moment of his death. In the book there was no call, there was no peace, Gatsby dies with no one by his side except Nick and his father Mr.Gatz although in the movie Gatsby dies with no one by his side. In both the book and the movie, Nick was the only one that Gatsby spoke to before he died, thinking it was Daisy.

Overall, I think the book and movie are similar. Because they both pass the main idea of the story, even though the book and the movie are several age apart. The audience during the time they published the book and when they produced the movie was different. Reading the book and then watching the movie, I could see that the director try really had to delete some scene and focus on the message about regaining the past is irretrievable all you can do it move forward.

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