I mentioned in an earlier post that I was going to start reading 'classics' more, and I started out with The Great Gatsby. When I was finished, I wasn't quite sure what I had missed, but I was left with a sort of, yeah,.. so? kind of feeling. I thought I'd missed something magnanimous because after all, The Great Gatsby has been a classic for decades, but I wasn't getting it, somehow. I decided to go out and find a copy of Cliffs Notes to help me see what I had missed.
Cliffs Notes are wonderful. For this particular book I realized my problem was that I had just read it too quickly. I was trying to read it like a regular novel, one where there are characters and a story, and not a lot of symbolism, and you don't think much about it afterwards, if ever. This is not The Great Gatsby type of novel.
I sat down with my Cliffs Notes and the book and 're-read' it; not totally word for word, but looking for the symbols I missed the first time around. I have come away with a much better understanding of The Great Gatsby as a result, and will certainly use Cliffs Notes in the future as I read more classics.
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