von Peter Griffith
Vor einhundert Jahren erschien F. Scott Fitzgeralds Roman „The Great Gatsby“. Seitdem ist es eines der beliebtesten amerikanischen Bücher geblieben – die Verkörperung des „Amerikanischen Traums“ und des „Jazz-Zeitalters“.
In der New Yorker High Society taucht plötzlich ein gewisser Jay Gatsby auf. Niemand kennt die Wahrheit über seine Vergangenheit oder die Quelle seines enormen Reichtums. Auf seinem Anwesen auf Long Island veranstaltet er legendäre Partys, zu denen die Elite New Yorks unbedingt eingeladen werden möchte.
Doch all das inszeniert Gatsby nur für einen einzigen Gast: Daisy Buchanan, seine Jugendliebe und das Ziel all seiner Sehnsüchte.
Daisy ist inzwischen mit Tom Buchanan verheiratet, der wiederum eine Affäre mit Myrtle Wilson hat. Myrtle träumt davon, ihr Leben als Ehefrau des Tankstellenbesitzers George gegen die glitzernde Welt der Reichen einzutauschen. Als Nick Carraway, Daisys Cousin, Gatsbys neuer Nachbar wird, ergeben sich neue Chancen, Daisy endlich wiederzusehen.
Fotos von 'The Great Gatsby'
Textauszug aus 'The Great Gatsby'
| Tom: | Self-control! I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well if that’s the idea you can count me out. Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white. |
| Jordan: | We’re all white here. |
| Tom: | I know I’m not very popular. I don’t give big parties. I suppose you’ve got to make your house into a pigsty in order to have any friends, in the modern world. |
| Gatsby: | I’ve got something to tell you, old sport |
| Daisy: | Please don’t. Please let’s all go home. Why don’t we all go home? |
| Jordan: | That’s a good idea. Come on Tom. Nobody wants a drink. |
| Tom: | I want to know what Mr Gatsby has to tell me. |
| Gatsby: | Your wife doesn’t love you. She’s never loved you. She loves me. |
| Tom: | You must be crazy. |
| Gatsby: | She never loved you, do you hear? She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved anyone except me! |
| Tom: | Sit down Daisy. What’s been going on? I want to hear all about it. |
| Gatsby: | I told you what’s been going on. Going for five years – and you didn’t know. |
| Tom: | You’ve been seeing this fellow for five years? |
| Gatsby: | Not seeing. No, we couldn’t meet. But both of us loved each other all the time, old sport, and you didn’t know. I used to laugh sometimes – to think that you didn’t know. |
| Tom: | Oh – that’s all. You’re crazy! I can’t speak about what happened five years ago, because I didn’t know Daisy then – and I’ll be damned if I see how you got within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries to the back door. But all the rest of that’s a God damned lie. Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me now. |