The Great Gatsby

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The Great Gatsby, by the American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, was first published in 1925. The story takes place in New York City and Long Island in the 1920s. It has often been described as the epitome of the "Jazz Age" in American literature. Gatsby

Fitzgerald's novel was not popular when it was first published, selling fewer than 24,000 copies during his lifetime. Largely forgotten during the Great Depression and World War II, it was republished in the 1950s and quickly found a wide readership. Over the following decades it emerged as a standard text in secondary school and university courses on literature in countries around the world. It is often cited as one of the greatest English-language novels of the 20th century.

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

Contents

Summary

Jay Gatsby is a young millionaire with a mysterious and somewhat notorious past. No one quite knows how he made his fortune; some believe he is a bootlegger. Rumors circulate of him "killing a man", or being a German spy during the Great War and the possibility of him being a cousin of contemporaneous German ruler Kaiser Wilhelm. He is famous for throwing glamorous parties attended by high society, with their countless gatecrashers whom he generously tolerates. However, Gatsby has no ties to the society of the rich in which he circulates, and is a lonely man. All he really wants is to "repeat the past" – to be reunited with the love of his life and golden girl, Daisy. It is revealed that Daisy is the primary reason he pursued a life of money, the other being that he wanted to escape from the life of his father, a farmer. But Daisy is now Daisy Buchanan, married to the staid, relatively respectable millionaire Tom Buchanan, and the couple now has a young child. For Gatsby, though, Daisy's new status as mother and wife hardly constitutes an obstacle in regaining her love; and Daisy, feeling trapped and bored in her marriage with the unfaithful Tom, is flattered by the return of Gatsby's attention.

The narrator of the novel is 29 year old Nick Carraway, an apprentice Wall Street trader in the rising financial markets of the early 1920s, who is also Daisy's cousin. Carraway has moved into a small bungalow next to the mansion (a "factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy") owned by the millionaire Gatsby. Eventually, Carraway cynically realizes that the rich, as respectable as they may seem superficially, are indeed "careless people," and Tom and Daisy are no exception. Tom has a mistress, Myrtle, the wife of the gas station owner in the wasteland of ashes around present day Flushing, Queens, New York, between the fabulous mansions on Long Island and New York City. Nick meets and quickly befriends Gatsby though, and becomes his liaison with Daisy. One afternoon, after a confrontation between Tom and Gatsby over Daisy, Daisy runs over Myrtle while driving back from the city. Tom misleads Myrtle's heartbroken husband George, implying that the accident was Gatsby's fault, though it is not clear if it was intentional. In a fit of blinding vengeance, Gatsby is consequently shot by George Wilson; Wilson commits suicide immediately afterward. Hardly anyone, not even Daisy, goes to Gatsby's funeral, and Nick, Gatsby's sole remaining friend, attends it with Gatsby's father, a poor farmer. Only one guest shows up, one of Gatsby's previous party-goers who was amazed with Gatsby's incredible library. Gatsby is buried with the same mystery in which he suddenly appeared.

Literary elements

Structure

  • Nonlinear representation of time
  • 1st person limited point of view

Themes

The main theme of the novel is:

  • The rise and fall of the American Dream. It is debatable whether Buchanan represents the American Dream, by which people obtain their wealth openly and legally, whatever their status in society, in contrast to Gatsby, for whom the acquisition of wealth has its origins in the underworld. Tom Buchanan is unfaithful; Daisy Buchanan is artificial; Gatsby himself is an enigmatic and shadowy figure. This is highlighted by the passage regarding the Dutch settlers near the end of the book. Just as the settlers envisioned a limitless world of possibility as they caught a glimpse so did Gatsby also catch a glimpse of an entirely new world of the aristocracy. The fall of the dream is the reality that results from the initial world of limitless possibility.

Minor themes:

  • The novel discusses questions of racism through the character of Tom Buchanan who, on top of his loose morals, is also a white supremacist. This theme, however minor in its focus, adds to the Buchanans' corruption in contrast to Gatsby.
  • The contrast between East and West. Fitzgerald contrasts the Eastern and Western portions of the United States in many of his works (Diamond as Big as the Ritz is a prime example) but in Gatsby, the West Egg (where Nick lives) is visually the more garish of the two and of a distinctly lower class, while the East Egg is where the "old money" lives, and of a higher class. This even more obvious contrast gives the reader a clear idea of the author's opinion on social classes in America during his time.

Symbols

  • The green light on the end of Daisy's dock is introduced at the end of Chapter 1, when Gatsby reaches, "trembling", out toward it across the Sound. It clearly represents Gatsby's dreams and hopes, but has other, more subtle, associations such as money and "all the glamour and beauty in the world". The light also seems to symbolize the impossibility of Gatsby winning back Daisy, being far away in the distance and out of reach. It can also be interpreted as a veil that hides the true Daisy from Gatsby's eyes. Green is also the colour of jealousy, and - while Gatsby himself does not outwardly display any such kind - there is a possibility that he is jealous of Daisy's marriage with Tom Buchanan.
  • The disembodied eyes of a giant advertisement in the slum where Myrtle lives, referred to as the eyes of "Dr. T.J Eckleburg", symbolize a brooding presence in the slum. George Wilson's assertion that "God sees everything" in chapter 8, which he makes while staring at Eckleburg's eyes, reinforces the interpretation that the billboard is an ominescent presence in the wasteland.
  • The colors white and yellow have special significance in the novel. White is a symbol of purity and goodness, while yellow is the color of corruption and greed. This illuminates the character of Daisy, who is named after a flower that is white on the outside and yellow in the center.
  • Fitzgerald was among the American expatriates who lived in Paris in the 1920s. The name Gatsby is a close homophone of the word gaspille from the verb gaspiller ("to waste"). It also is an obvious pun on "gat," the slang term for pistol.
  • It is notable that many of the female characters have names of flowers (e.g. Myrtle, Daisy).
  • Fitzgerald, along with Ernest Hemingway and other expatriates, constantly ressurrected the theme of a "waste land" established by T.S. Eliot in his poem of the same name. In the poem, Eliot speaks constantly of loneliness and despair while conjuring dark and depressing imagery such as bones and ruined cities in order to reflect his theme. It is no coincidence that in "The Great Gatsby" the road from West Egg to New York City contains a veritable waste land known as the "valley of ashes". In one interpretation, the ash heap, which George Wilson lives in, symbolizes the constant plight of the poor while they endure the constant oppression of the wealthy, as well as the social decay brought on by this cyclical way of life in America. The eyes of T.J. Eckleberg which overlook the ash heap serve as a reminder that even though the wealthy may live well on earth and the poor, as George Wilson, have to bear a waste land, it shall not be so in the afterlife.

Important quotes

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

“I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known”
Nick describing himself.

“…there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life…”
This is Nick describing Gatsby's personality in Chapter 1.

“…drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.”
Nick describing Tom and Daisy's lifestyle.

"I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." Daisy, talking to Nick about her daughter.

“Her voice is full of money…”
Gatsby describes Daisy's voice.

"There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind" - Nick, describing Tom Buchanan finally understanding the connection between Gatsby and Daisy.

"He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete."
A narration of Gatsby's ill-fated courtship of Daisy.

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . And then one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
The final lines of the novel.

Trivia

Publications

The Great Gatsby

Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (Cliffs Notes)

The Great Gatsby – Penguin Critical Studies Guide

The Great Gatsby (Audio Editions CD)

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: A Literary Reference

Film

The Great Gatsby has been filmed four times:

Image:Daisy&Jay.jpg
  1. In 1926 by Herbert Brenon – A silent movie of which, according to the IMDb, no copies have survived (only a trailer with a few minutes of footage remains);
  2. In 1949 by Elliott Nugent – Starring Alan Ladd;
  3. In 1974 by Jack Clayton – Often considered the definitive screen version, starring Robert Redford in the title role and Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan, with a script by Francis Ford Coppola;
  4. In 2001 by Robert Markowitz – A made-for-TV movie starring Toby Stephens and Mira Sorvino.

Opera

An operatic treatment of the novel was commissioned by the New York Metropolitan Opera to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the debut of James Levine. The opera premiered on December 20, 1999. Music and libretto were by John Harbison, with popular song lyrics by Murray Horwitz.

See also

External links

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