The Great Gatsby Comparison

Literature has been made into films for decades now, ever since the invention of movie technology in the 1900’s. There are many challenges when it comes to taking a piece of literature and transforming the ideas the author conveyed of the characters into a motion picture. In 2013, Baz Luhrmann directed the film The Great Gatsby originally written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925. Directing a movie almost 90 years after the author published the story brings upon many challenges, including capturing the same spark of the original characters, setting, and plot in a completely different time period, and because of this there are many differences and similarities between the characterizations of Gatsby, Nick, and Daisy when comparing the book and

Scott Fitzgerald and the movie directed by Baz Luhrmann. Fitzgerald and Luhrmann both depicted Gatsby as being a mysterious, wealthy man that everyone knows of but knows nothing about, and is rumored greatly. For example, when Nick goes to his first party of Gatsby’s he hears of outlandish rumors pertaining Gatsby like “.. he was a German spy during the war” and “[I will] bet he killed a man once” (Fitzgerald 48), and this same mystery surrounding Jay Gatsby was well depicted in the movie. Though there are also many differences between the characterization of Jay Gatsby when comparing the novel to the movie. Fitzgerald’s scene at the hotel on the hot day and Luhrmann's scene completely characterize Gatsby in different ways. Fitzgerald let the readers know that Gatsby was getting mad when Tom was criticizing his past and his affairs in the drug business by Nick describing that “[he looked like he had killed a man]” (Fitzgerald 142). Luhrmann took a different approach at this, and had Gatsby lash out at Tom, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt, making a fist, and screaming in his face “shut up” (The Great Gatsby). These two very different scenes characterize Gatsby in two contrasting ways, someone that can hold in his anger, and someone that violently takes it out, which was not an element of Gatsby we ever saw in the novel. To conclude, there are many similarities and differences between Jay Gatsby’s character in the movie and