The Great Gatsby

Is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald

Historical context

Set on the prosperous Long Island of 1922, The Great Gatsby provides a critical social history of America during
the Roaring Twenties within its fictional narrative. That era, known for widespread economic prosperity, the
development of jazz music, flapper culture, new technologies in communication (motion pictures, broadcast
radio, recorded music) forging a genuine mass culture, and bootlegging, along with other criminal activity, is
plausibly depicted in Fitzgerald's novel. Fitzgerald uses many of these societal developments of the 1920s to
build Gatsby's stories, from many of the simple details like automobiles to broader themes like Fitzgerald's
discreet allusions to the organized crime culture which was the source of Gatsby's fortune.[5] Fitzgerald depicts
the garish society of the Roaring Twenties by placing the book's plotline within the historical context of the
era.[6]

Fitzgerald's visits to Long Island's North Shore and his experience attending parties at mansions inspired The
Great Gatsby's setting. Today, there are a number of theories as to which mansion was the inspiration for the
book. One possibility is Land's End, a notable Gold Coast Mansion where Fitzgerald may have attended a
party.[7] Many of the events in Fitzgerald's early life are reflected throughout The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald was a
young man from Minnesota, and, like Nick, who went to Yale, he was educated at an Ivy League school,
Princeton. Fitzgerald is also similar to Jay Gatsby in that he fell in love while stationed far from home in the
military and fell into a life of decadence trying to prove himself to the girl he loved. Fitzgerald became a second
lieutenant and was stationed at Camp Sheridan in Montgomery, Alabama. There he met and fell in love with a
wild 17-year-old beauty named Zelda Sayre. Zelda finally agreed to marry him, but her preference for wealth,
fun, and leisure led her to delay their wedding until he could prove a success.[8] Like Nick in The Great Gatsby,
Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle seductive and exciting, and, like Gatsby, he had always idolized the very
rich.[8] In many ways, The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgerald's attempt to confront his conflicted feelings about
the Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted,
even as she led him toward everything he despised.[8]

In her book Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby (2013), Sarah Churchwell
speculates that parts of the ending of The Great Gatsby were based on the Hall-Mills Case.[9] Based on her
forensic search for clues, she asserts that the two victims in the Hall-Mills murder case inspired the characters
who were murdered in The Great Gatsby.[10]

Plot summary

In the summer of 1922, Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate and veteran of the Great War from the Midwest—who
serves as the novel's narrator—takes a job in New York as a bond salesman. He rents a small house on Long
Island, in the fictional village of West Egg, next door to the lavish mansion of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious multi-
millionaire who holds extravagant parties but does not participate in them. Nick drives around the bay to East
Egg for dinner at the home of his cousin, Daisy Fay Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, a college acquaintance of
Nick's. They introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, an attractive, cynical young golfer. She reveals to Nick that Tom has
a mistress, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the "valley of ashes,"[11] an industrial dumping ground between West
Egg and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle to an
apartment that Tom uses like a hotel room for Myrtle, as well as other women whom he also sleeps with. At
Tom's New York apartment, a vulgar and bizarre party takes place. It ends with Tom physically abusing Myrtle,
breaking her nose in the process, after she says Daisy's name several times, which makes him angry.

The Plaza Hotel in the early 1920s

Nick eventually receives an invitation to one of Gatsby's parties. Nick encounters Jordan Baker at the party and
they meet Gatsby himself, an aloof and surprisingly young man who recognizes Nick because they were in the
same division in the Great War. Through Jordan, Nick later learns that Gatsby knew Daisy through a purely
chance meeting in 1917 when Daisy and her friends were doing volunteer service work with young officers
headed to Europe. From their brief meetings and casual encounters at that time, Gatsby became (and still is)
deeply in love with Daisy. Gatsby had hoped that his wild parties would attract an unsuspecting Daisy, who lived
across the bay, to appear at his doorstep and allow him to present himself as a man of wealth and position.

Having developed a budding friendship with Nick, Gatsby uses him to arrange a reunion between himself and
Daisy. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an
initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy begin an affair over the summer. At a luncheon at the Buchanans'
house, Daisy speaks to Gatsby with such undisguised intimacy that Tom realizes she is in love with Gatsby.
Though Tom is himself an adulterer, he is outraged by his wife's infidelity. He forces the group to drive into New
York City and confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel, asserting that he and Daisy have a history that
Gatsby could never understand. In addition to that, he announces to his wife that Gatsby is a criminal whose
fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy decides to stay with Tom, and Tom
contemptuously sends her back to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt her.

On the way back, Gatsby's car strikes and kills Tom's mistress, Myrtle. Nick later learns from Gatsby that Daisy,
not Gatsby himself, was driving the car at the time of the accident. Myrtle's husband, George Wilson, falsely
concludes that the driver of the yellow car is the secret lover he suspects his wife had. He learns that the yellow
car is Gatsby's, fatally shoots him, and then turns the gun on himself. Nick organizes an unsettlingly small funeral
for Gatsby which none of Gatsby's associates, only one of his partygoers and his estranged father Henry Gatz,
attend. Later, Nick runs into Tom in New York and finds out that Tom told George that the yellow car was
Gatsby's and gave him Gatsby's address. Disillusioned with the East, Nick moves back to the Midwest.

Major characters

Nick Carraway—a Yale University graduate from the Midwest, a World War I veteran, and, at the start of the
plot, a newly arrived resident of West Egg, age 29 (later 30). He also serves as the first-person narrator of the
novel. He is Gatsby's next-door neighbor and a bond salesman. He is easy-going, occasionally sarcastic, and
somewhat optimistic, although this latter quality fades as the novel progresses. He is more grounded and more
practical than the other characters, and is always in awe of their lifestyles and morals.

Jay Gatsby (originally James "Jimmy" Gatz)—a young, mysterious millionaire with shady business connections
(later revealed to be a bootlegger), originally from North Dakota. He is obsessed with Daisy Buchanan, a
beautiful debutante from Louisville, Kentucky whom he met when he was a young military officer stationed at
the Army's Camp Taylor in Louisville during World War I. According to Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, Matthew J.
Bruccoli's biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the character is based on the bootlegger and former World War
officer, Max Gerlach. Gatsby is also said to have briefly studied at Trinity College, Oxford in England after the end
of the war.
Daisy Fay Buchanan – an attractive, though shallow and self-absorbed, young debutante and socialite from
Louisville, Kentucky, identified as a flapper.[12] She is Nick's second cousin once removed, and the wife of Tom
Buchanan. Before she married Tom, Daisy had a romantic relationship with Gatsby. Her choice between Gatsby
and Tom is one of the central conflicts in the novel. Daisy is believed to have been inspired by Fitzgerald's own
youthful romances with Ginevra King.

Thomas "Tom" Buchanan—a millionaire who lives in East Egg, and Daisy's husband. Tom is an imposing man of
muscular build with a "husky tenor" voice and arrogant demeanor. He was a football star at Yale University.
Buchanan has parallels with William Mitchell, the Chicagoan who married Ginevra King. Buchanan and Mitchell
were both Chicagoans with an interest in polo. Like Ginevra's father, whom Fitzgerald resented, Buchanan
attended Yale and is a white supremacist.[14]

Jordan Baker—A professional golfer and Daisy Buchanan's long-time friend with a sarcastic streak and an aloof
attitude. She is Nick Carraway's girlfriend for most of the novel, though they grow apart towards the end. She
has a slightly shady reputation amongst the New York social elite, due to her habit of being evasive and
untruthful with her friends and lovers. She established herself as a professional golfer in a predominantly male
sport. With great success came criticism as she faced a cheating scandal, which harmed her reputation as a
golfer. Fitzgerald told Maxwell Perkins that Jordan was based on the golfer Edith Cummings, a friend of Ginevra
King.[14] Her name is a play on the two popular automobile brands, the Jordan Motor Car Company and the
Baker Motor Vehicle, alluding to Jordan's "fast" reputation and the new freedom presented to Americans,
especially women, in the 1920s.[15][16][17]

George B. Wilson—a mechanic and owner of a garage. He is disliked by both his wife, Myrtle Wilson, and Tom
Buchanan, who describes him as "so dumb he doesn't know he's alive." At the end of the novel, he kills Gatsby,
wrongly believing that he had been driving the car that killed Myrtle, and then kills himself.

Myrtle Wilson—George's wife, and Tom Buchanan's mistress. Myrtle, who possesses a fierce vitality, is
desperate to find refuge from her disappointing marriage. She is accidentally killed by Gatsby's car (driven by
Daisy, though Gatsby takes the blame for the accident).

Meyer Wolfsheim—a Jewish friend and mentor of Gatsby's, described as a gambler who fixed the World Series.
Wolfsheim appears only twice in the novel, the second time refusing to attend Gatsby's funeral. He is a clear
allusion to Arnold Rothstein, a New York crime kingpin who was notoriously blamed for the Black Sox Scandal
that tainted the 1919 World Series.[20]

Themes

Sarah Churchwell sees The Great Gatsby as a "cautionary tale of the decadent downside of the American
dream."[59] The story deals with the limits and realities of America's ideals of social and class mobility, and the
inevitably hopeless lower class aspirations to rise above the station(s) of their birth. The book in stark relief
through the narrator, Nick Carraway, observes that: "... a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out
unequally at birth."[60] Using elements of irony and tragic ending, it also delves into themes of excesses of the
rich and recklessness of youth.

Journalist Nick Gillespie sees The Great Gatsby as a story of the underlying permanence of class differences,
even "in the face of a modern economy based not on status and inherited position but on innovation and an
ability to meet ever-changing consumer needs."[63] This interpretation asserts that The Great Gatsby captures
the American experience because it is a story about change and those who resist it, whether the change comes
in the form of a new wave of immigrants (Southern Europeans in the early 20th century, Latin Americans today),
the nouveau riche, or successful minorities. Americans from the 1920s to the 21st century have plenty of
experience with changing economic and social circumstances. As Gillespie states, "While the specific terms of
the equation are always changing, it's easy to see echoes of Gatsby's basic conflict between established sources
of economic and cultural power and upstarts in virtually all aspects of American society."[63] Because this
concept is particularly American and can be seen throughout American history, readers are able to relate to The
Great Gatsby, which has lent the novel an enduring popularity.[63]

Later critical writings on The Great Gatsby, following the novel's revival, focus in particular on Fitzgerald's
disillusionment with the American Dream—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—in the context of the
hedonistic Jazz Age, a name for the era which Fitzgerald said he had coined. In 1970, Roger Pearson published
"Gatsby: False prophet of the American Dream," in which he states that Fitzgerald "has come to be associated
with this concept of the AMERICAN Dream more than any other writer of the twentieth century."[64] Pearson
goes on to suggest that Gatsby's failure to realize the American dream demonstrates that it no longer exists
except in the minds of those as materialistic as Gatsby. He concludes that the American dream pursued by
Gatsby "is, in reality, a nightmare," bringing nothing but discontent and disillusionment to those who chase it as
they realize that it is unsustainable and ultimately unattainable.

In addition to exploring the trials and tribulations of achieving the great American dream during the Jazz Age,
The Great Gatsby explores societal gender expectations as a theme, exemplifying in Daisy Buchanan's character
the marginalization of women in the East Egg social class that Fitzgerald depicts. As an upper-class white woman
living in East Egg during this time period, Daisy must adhere to certain societal expectations, including but
certainly not limited to actively filling the role of dutiful wife, mother, keeper of the house, and charming
socialite. As the reader finds in the novel, many of Daisy's choices, ultimately culminating in the tragedy of the
plot and misery for all those involved, can be at least partly attributed to her prescribed role as a "beautiful little
fool" who is completely reliant on her husband for financial and societal security. For instance, one could argue
that Daisy's ultimate decision to remain with her husband despite her feelings for Gatsby can be attributed to
the status, security, and comfort that her marriage to Tom Buchanan provides. Additionally, the theme of the
female familial role within The Great Gatsby goes hand in hand with that of the ideal family unit associated with
the great American dream—a dream that goes unrealized for Gatsby and Daisy in Fitzgerald's prose.

Symbolism

The green light that shines at the end of the dock of Daisy's house across the Sound from Gatsby's house is
frequently mentioned in the background of the plot. It has variously been interpreted as a symbol of Gatsby's
longing for Daisy and, more broadly, of the American dream.