The Great Gatsby Synthesis Essay

Ashwini Patel

The Great Gatsby

Synthesis Essay

When novels are being translated into movies, the meaning can often get lost in translation. The depth that the novel has to it can often be lost in the movie. The movies are translated by directors and producers for the entertainment of the public, but a book is all the author’s creativity put onto paper. Baz Luhrmann’s film, The Great Gatsby, would have been a great film on its own, but it was not a successful adaptation of the novel causing the true meaning to be lost in all the film and music. The novel was a story that took place in the 1920s, so jazz would have been the obvious music choice. Baz Luhrmann chose a completely different route with hip hop from artists such as Jay-Z, Beyonce, and Lana Del Ray. The hip hop music portrays how upbeat and lively Gatsby’s extravagant parties are to the present day viewer, but the sense of time was lost. Although some such as Emerson would say the music, “[encompassed] the

Emerson points out, “When the glare from the green light shines out, we are reminded that Daisy Buchanan is just across the bay, and we have hope, just as Gatsby does,” but in the movie Daisy was not the same person she was in the novel. In the movie, we almost feel pity for her in many of the scenes, but she was supposed to be, “an awful human being who inadvertently gets him murdered” (“Leonardo). Luhrmann’s choices of changing the novel in some aspects made the characters loose some of their main attributes. Although the movie was beautiful on its own, it was not the same story as the original The Great Gatsby. The movie could have kept the same meaning as the novel if Luhrmann had focused less on the creative aspects and adapting the story to today’s time period. Altering these few aspects caused the true meaning to be lost in