Su Ziqing, Class 8, Senior 2, Shenzhen Xin’an Middle School Instructed by Lin Qiuxia Tang Ying

深圳市新安中学 高二（8）班苏子晴 指导老师：林秋霞 汤颖

During my vacation, I read a book called “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It made me think a lot after finishing it because of the hero’s sad ending, which was unexpected.

Gatsby was a man who loved a woman named Daisy. This is not just a simple love story. The writer is not like other writers who make the heroines noble and unsullied like Joan of Arc. This writer is just totally different from any other writers.

As a heroine, Daisy is not perfect. She was an immature woman and a selfish and cold mother of a 3- year-old girl.

The writer wrote the story from the perspective of a third person — through another person telling the story, and we readers learn about every character from this third person.

This way of writing is unusual and interesting, and it makes me feel refreshed and I enjoyed reading the whole book.

Anyways, Gatsby fell in love with Daisy when he was a very young man. Daisy loved him, too. They actually both had a sweet time when they were together, but somehow things changed. Gatsby had to join the army, which forced him to leave Daisy behind.

At the beginning, Daisy was very upset, and she didn’t attend any events at the time, which made everyone surprised (Daisy was a young lady at that time). However, after some time, she changed after meeting a man named Tom Buchanan, who was a playboy and an athlete. Soon, they got married and had a baby girl.

After they moved to East Egg, Gatsby came back from the war. He moved to West Egg, following them. He lived just opposite their house. He organized many parties to attract Daisy because, obviously, he still loved her deeply.

He was richer than before. Luckily, to Gatsby’s surprise, Daisy met him and fell in love with him again after so many years. Since then, they often met secretly behind Daisy’s husband’s back.

However, one day, Buchanan realized that something was happening between Daisy and Gatsby when Daisy, Gatsby and he went to New York together. Buchanan told his wife to choose between them. Daisy chose her husband.

When they came back home, Daisy was distracted. When she was driving, she hit and killed Buchanan’s mistress by accident. When that happened, Buchanan was not there, but Gatsby was there. He instantly confessed to the crime to save Daisy. In the end, Buchanan convinced his dead mistress’s husband to shoot Gatsby. That was the whole story. Based on Gatsby’s behavior, do we think he deserves to be considered “great?”

Gatsby’s whole life was devoted to his lover Daisy. Obviously Daisy was not the right woman for him. After he died, Daisy just went away with her husband, and took Gatsby’s death for granted. Anyway, I think she was heartless, even to a man whom she had loved for a long time.

From this book, I know that what we want or what we want others to do for us isn’t necessarily right. In those moments, we can’t force others to do what we want or you will have a bad ending just like Gatsby.

Like in the story, Gatsby loved Daisy so much and he wanted Daisy to leave her husband and live with him. However, Daisy didn’t want to do that. Thus, then came the sad ending. Anyway, Gatsby was brave!