The Great Gatsby

Critical Essays Social Stratification: The Great Gatsby as Social Commentary

In The Great GatsbyFitzgerald offers up commentary on a variety of themes — justice,

power, greed, betrayal, the American dream, and so on. Of all the themes, perhaps
none is more well developed than that of social stratification. The Great Gatsby is
regarded as a brilliant piece of social commentary, offering a vivid peek into American
life in the 1920s. Fitzgerald carefully sets up his novel into distinct groups but, in the
end, each group has its own problems to contend with, leaving a powerful reminder of
what a precarious place the world really is. By creating distinct social classes — old
money, new money, and no money — Fitzgerald sends strong messages about the
elitism running throughout every strata of society.

The first and most obvious group Fitzgerald attacks is, of course, the rich. However, for
Fitzgerald (and certainly his characters), placing the rich all in one group together would
be a great mistake. For many of those of modest means, the rich seem to be unified by
their money. However, Fitzgerald reveals this is not the case. In The Great Gatsby,
Fitzgerald presents two distinct types of wealthy people. First, there are people like the
Buchanans and Jordan Baker who were born into wealth. Their families have had
money for many generations, hence they are "old money." As portrayed in the novel,
the "old money" people don't have to work (they rarely, if ever, even speak about
business arrangements) and they spend their time amusing themselves with whatever
takes their fancy. Daisy, Tom, Jordan, and the distinct social class they represent are
perhaps the story's most elitist group, imposing distinctions on the other people of
wealth (like Gatsby) based not so much on how much money one has, but where that
money came from and when it was acquired. For the "old money" people, the fact that
Gatsby (and countless other people like him in the 1920s) has only just recently
acquired his money is reason enough to dislike him. In their way of thinking, he can't
possibly have the same refinement, sensibility, and taste they have. Not only does he
work for a living, but he comes from a low-class background which, in their opinion,
means he cannot possibly be like them.

In many ways, the social elite are right. The "new money" people cannot be like them,
and in many ways that works in their favor — those in society's highest echelon are not
nice people at all. They are judgmental and superficial, failing to look at the essence of
the people around them (and themselves, too). Instead, they live their lives in such a
way as to perpetuate their sense of superiority — however unrealistic that may be. The
people with newly acquired wealth, though, aren't necessarily much better. Think of
Gatsby's partygoers. They attend his parties, drink his liquor, and eat his food, never
once taking the time to even meet their host (nor do they even bother to wait for an
invitation, they just show up). When Gatsby dies, all the people who frequented his
house every week mysteriously became busy elsewhere, abandoning Gatsby when he
could no longer do anything for them. One would like to think the newly wealthy would
be more sensitive to the world around them — after all, it was only recently they were
without money and most doors were closed to them. As Fitzgerald shows, however,
their concerns are largely living for the moment, steeped in partying and other forms of
excess.

Just as he did with people of money, Fitzgerald uses the people with no money to
convey a strong message. Nick, although he comes from a family with a bit of wealth,
doesn't have nearly the capital of Gatsby or Tom. In the end, though, he shows himself
to be an honorable and principled man, which is more than Tom exhibits. Myrtle,
though, is another story. She comes from the middle class at best. She is trapped, as
are so many others, in the valley of ashes, and spends her days trying to make it out. In
fact, her desire to move up the social hierarchy leads her to her affair with Tom and she
is decidedly pleased with the arrangement.

Because of the misery pervading her life, Myrtle has distanced herself from her moral
obligations and has no difficulty cheating on her husband when it means that she gets
to lead the lifestyle she wants, if only for a little while. What she doesn't realize,
however, is that Tom and his friends will never accept her into their circle. (Notice how
Tom has a pattern of picking lower-class women to sleep with. For him, their
powerlessness makes his own position that much more superior. In a strange way,
being with women who aspire to his class makes him feel better about himself and
allows him to perpetuate the illusion that he is a good and important man.) Myrtle is no
more than a toy to Tom and to those he represents.

Fitzgerald has a keen eye and in The Great Gatsby presents a harsh picture of the
world he sees around him. The 1920s marked a time of great post-war economic
growth, and Fitzgerald captures the frenzy of the society well. Although, of course,
Fitzgerald could have no way of foreseeing the stock market crash of 1929, the world he
presents in The Great Gatsby seems clearly to be headed for disaster. They have
assumed skewed worldviews, mistakenly believing their survival lies in stratification and
reinforcing social boundaries. They erroneously place their faith in superficial external
means (such as money and materialism), while neglecting to cultivate the compassion
and sensitivity that, in fact, separate humans from the animals.

Displaced Spirituality in The Great Gatsby

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald proudly tackles the theme of spirituality. His attack is
subtle, making his message heard most forcefully by what is missing, rather than what
is there. The world of The Great Gatsby is one of excess, folly, and pleasure, a world
where people are so busy living for the moment that they have lost touch with any sort
of morality, and end up breaking laws, cheating, and even killing. As debauched as this
may sound, however, they have not abandoned spirituality altogether. Rather,
Fitzgerald's post-war partiers have substituted materialism and instant creature comforts
for philosophic principles, thus suggesting a lack of order and structure in the worlds of
East Egg, West Egg, and beyond.
Several elements suggest an imbalance in the moral makeup of the characters found
in The Great Gatsby. In Nick's opening statements, he is attempting to set himself up as
an honorable and trustworthy man. His reason for doing so, however, isn't made entirely
clear until readers are introduced to the people with whom he interacts. Barely halfway
through the first chapter, Fitzgerald reveals that Tom Buchanan is not only having an
affair, but he is shamelessly bold in his refusal to cover it up; his wife knows and
although she is a bit irritated, she has come to accept Tom's ways. In addition, those in
East Egg discuss things of such great importance as what to do on the longest day and
why living in the East is ideal, showing that the supposedly social elite are perhaps a bit
out of touch with reality. They clearly treat people as objects, and are unconcerned with
whether their actions impede on anyone else's.

After the Buchanan's dinner party, The Great Gatsby is again and again filled with
excess. In fact, every one of the seven deadly sins (pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice,
gluttony, and lust) is well represented. None of the characters, including Nick, are free
from the deadly vices, which, at least in times past, have traditionally marked the
downfall of a community. It is interesting to note that although the seven deadly sins are
depicted time and time again by the people in The Great Gatsby, the theological
counterpart to the seven deadly sins, the seven cardinal virtues (faith, hope, love,
prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) are nearly invisible. Gatsby, of course, has
more hope than all the others put together, but in the end, that one thing, no matter how
strong, can't save him.

Although countless acts of questionable integrity can be found within the pages of The
Great Gatsby, the final and most blatant acts of immorality, of course, come near the
book's end. Daisy shows her true self when she runs down Myrtle without even
stopping. Gatsby becomes the target for another man's murderous rage when he is
gunned down by Wilson (assisted, through association, by Tom). And finally, the last
great act of disregard for one's fellow human comes in perhaps the most surprising and
disturbing form of all: the lack of mourners at Gatsby's funeral. Despite how people had
clamored to be associated with him in life, in death he became useless to them, and so
their interests took them elsewhere (with, of course, the sole exception of Nick).

Fitzgerald uses the acts and actions of his characters to convey a sense of growing
moral decrepitude, but he compounds his message through other means as well. First,
there is the giant billboard, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which, as George Wilson
reveals, represent the eyes of God, which can be interpreted in two ways. On one hand,
he could be suggesting that a watchful presence overlooks society all the time, and will
hold the world accountable for its actions. Given this interpretation, Fitzgerald seems to
be urging readers to remember that they themselves are being watched, so they had
better prepare to account for their actions. On the other hand, George's statement may
be taken as a testament to his skewed judgment. Has he fallen so far away from
standard religion that he does, in fact, believe the enormous eyes watching over the
valley of ashes are the eyes of God? Does he interpret the eyes literally, as opposed to
metaphorically? If so, Fitzgerald is offering a less uplifting message, suggesting that
society has fallen so far away from traditional religious teachings that people have lost
all faith and can only misread the significance of the material world around us.

Finally, Fitzgerald uses geography to represent his message of spiritual dysfunction,

beginning with the distinct communities of East Egg and West Egg. Granted, their
differences are largely socioeconomic, but when looking at the inhabitants of each Egg,
the West Eggers stand somewhat above the East Eggers (albeit not by much). Whereas
no one in East Egg has any virtues to redeem themselves, West Egg does have Nick,
the one character in the book who has a fairly good sense of right and wrong. Just as
Fitzgerald favored one Egg over the other (despite it being perceived as the less
fashionable Egg), he also pits regions of the country against each other, with similar
results. There is no denying that Fitzgerald sees the Midwest as a land of promise.

He acknowledges it is less glamorous and exciting than the East, but it has a pureness
about it that the East lacks. All his characters come from the Midwest, and in the end,
the East does them in. As Nick says, "we possessed some deficiency in common which
made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life." Nick is the only one to realize this,
however, and so after he has become completely disillusioned with life in the East, he
heads home, presumably to a land that is still connected to the basic tenets of human
compassion and charity.

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald presents a world in which value systems have gone out
of balance. He is not espousing a heavy-handed Christian message, but rather he is
encouraging readers to stop and take inventory of their lives. Although some may see
Fitzgerald as implying a return to God is necessary for survival, the text supports
something far more subtle: Fitzgerald is urging a reconsideration of where society is and
where it is going.

Quotes from The Great Gatsby

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one . . . just remember that all the people in this
world haven't had the advantages that you've had." Chapter 1

"…what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my
interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men." Chapter 1

"I hope she'll be a fool — that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little
fool . . . You see, I think everything's terrible anyhow . . . And I know. I've been
everywhere and seen everything and done everything." Chapter 1

"Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light,

minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock." Chapter 1

"This is a valley of ashes — a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges
and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys
and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and
already crumbling through the powdery air." Chapter 2

"He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He's so dumb he doesn't know he's
alive." Chapter 2

"I married him because I thought he was a gentleman . . . I thought he knew something
about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe." Chapter 2

"He borrowed somebody's best suit to get married in, and never told me about it, and
the man came after it one day when he was out . . . I gave it to him and then I lay down
and cried . . . all afternoon." Chapter 2

"I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests
who had actually been invited. People were not invited — they went there." Chapter 3

"I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a
library." Chapter 3

"I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others — young clerks in the dusk,
wasting the most poignant moments of night and life." Chapter 3

"It takes two to make an accident." Chapter 3

"Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am
one of the few honest people that I have ever known." Chapter 3

"I belong to another generation . . . As for me, I am fifty years old, and I won't impose
myself on you any longer." Chapter 4

"'A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: 'There are only the
pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.'" Chapter 4

"Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was
standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes." Chapter 5

"Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about
being peasantry." Chapter 5

"If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay . . . You always have a
green light that burns all night at the end of your dock." Chapter 5

"His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people — his imagination had never
really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg,
Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God . . .
and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and
meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year
old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end."
Chapter 6

"Daisy and Jordan lay upon an enormous couch, like silver idols weighing down their
own white dresses against the singing breeze of the fans." Chapter 7

"I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone's away. There's something very
sensuous about it - overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your
hands." Chapter 7

"So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight." Chapter 7

"It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy — it increased her value in
his eyes." Chapter 8

"When a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any way. I keep out. When I
was a young man it was different . . . I stuck with them to the end . . . Let us learn to
show friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead." Chapter 9

"After Gatsby's death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes'
power of correction." Chapter 9

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures
and then retreated back into their money of their vast carelessness, or whatever it was
that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
Chapter 9

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic 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 one fine morning — So we beat on, boats against the current,
borne back ceaselessly into the past." Chapter 9
Published in 1925, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was to become his definitive work. In
1922, Fitzgerald declared, “I want to write something new—something extraordinary
and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned.” With the publication of The Great
Gatsby he achieved just that. Set in America’s Jazz Age, Fitzgerald creates a world of
money, power, corruption, and murder.

Critics often assert that The Great Gatsby is a uniquely American novel that depicts
American characters and themes. Indeed, Gatsby is the archetypal American character:
He is self-made, a man who literally invents or reinvents himself. He believes in the
American Dream “in the green light, the orgiastic future.” He believes that, in America,
one can become anything. Like a young Benjamin Franklin, he maps out his resolves
for future success and never wavers from his teenage conception of self. A seventeen-
year-old James Gatz invents Jay Gatsby, and it is to this vision that he remains true.
Ultimately, it is this vision that betrays him.

Gatsby represents the world of the ostentatious newly rich; however, he remains a
romantic idealist. Right from the beginning, the reader learns of Gatsby’s “extraordinary
gift for hope [and] a romantic readiness” that Nick has never before witnessed in
another human being. He is a paradox: the innocent bootlegger.

Nick Carraway, the narrator, is an idealistic midwestern salesman of stocks and bonds,
trying to make a go of it on Wall Street. The entire story is filtered through Nick and his
vision of Gatsby. It is significant that Fitzgerald chooses to write The Great Gatsby in
the past tense; indeed, the story is relayed entirely through memory, which is, of course,
selective. The lines between truth and fiction are blurred, and, essentially, the reader
must become a participant within the text; he or she must separate the lies from the
truth in order to glean the true meaning. Illusion versus reality is a central theme
throughout the novel.

Without a “past,” Gatsby himself becomes a “text” to be written, revised, and rewritten
with each new “reader.” He reflects the fears, fantasies, and desires of his audience:
“Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once.” Gatsby is a metaphor for the
American experience; he is the product of a country without a past.

It is the past that Gatsby struggles to reinvent and reclaim. When Nick Carraway
suggests that “you can’t repeat the past.” Gatsby maintains, “Why of course you can!”
He remains unchanged, an innocent within a corrupt, disillusioned world. He fails to
realize that the past is gone. In the end, it is this romantic idealism that destroys Gatsby;
he refuses to relinquish the illusion that has propelled his life.

On one level, The Great Gatsby is about money: old, established wealth versus new
currency. Gatsby can never hope to obtain Daisy because he doesn’t have the “right”
kind of money. The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s indictment of the American Dream. For
Nick, Gatsby’s death represents the debasement of the dream. On another level, it
employs American mythology based upon East and West. The East epitomizes the
sophisticated realm of established wealth and privilege, while the West is the new
frontier, the place of the pioneer without a past or identity. Nick becomes disillusioned
with the East and returns to the Midwest, “the warm, center of the world.”

Fitzgerald clearly delineates class difference through his employment of setting. The
valley of ashes is “nowhere,” a place to be driven through on the way to the
“somewhere” by characters from both East and West Egg. It is here that Myrtle Wilson
is “run down like a dog” by Daisy Buchanan.

Careless drivers become a metaphor for the demoralized world of wealth and privilege
inhabited by people such as the Buchanans. Early on, Nick accuses Jordan Baker of
being a “rotten driver,” two drunks get into an accident at one of Gatsby’s parties, and,
finally, Daisy kills Myrtle with an automobile and leaves the scene of the crime.

Though The Great Gatsby is obviously a product of a post-World War I era, the novel
still retains thematic significance. The Great Gatsby might be interpreted as a warning
not only to Fitzgerald’s generation but to future generations as well. Beware of pursuing
that “orgiastic future” with too much fervor; one might well be destroyed by it, just as
Gatsby is.

The American Dream

The American Dream (in particular, the failure to achieve it) is one of the most important
themes in the novel. It’s established early on in the first chapter when a stranger asks
Nick for directions, making him “a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler,” like the brave
pioneers who traveled West in hopes of building better lives for themselves.
Immediately after that, Nick tells us that he read a series of finance books in the hopes
of making his fortune. Fitzgerald uses this juxtaposition of bankers and pioneers to
suggest that the American Dream of owning land and making a name for one’s self has
been subsumed by the desire to become rich and thereby perpetuate a capitalist
system.

This desire to be rich and successful is at the core of Gatsby’s dream of reuniting with
Daisy. He was willing to do anything to attain this dream, including getting involved with
Mr. Wolfsheim’s businesses. In a brutally ironic twist, the bootlegging that makes
Gatsby rich enough for Daisy is also one of the main reasons he loses her, because
when Tom tells her about it in Chapter VII she hesitates and thinks twice about leaving
him for Gatsby. Gatsby’s dream self-destructs because, like the American Dream as a
whole, it has been corrupted by money and power to the point where it is no longer real
or viable. In that sense, both Gatsby’s dream and the larger American Dream die even
before Wilson pulls the trigger. Gatsby’s death merely cements what we already know.
Home

In this context, “homes” should be distinguished from mere “houses,” of which there are
many in the novel, including Nick’s summer house and Gatsby’s palatial estate. With the
one exception of Jordan, whose idea of home we’re not privy to, the main characters
are itinerant, in the sense that they leave their childhood homes and spend most of their
adult lives moving around, never really making new lives for themselves. Gatsby, for
instance, runs away from home, leaving behind the name Jimmy Gatz. Nick also leaves
home at the beginning of the novel, only to return at the end, while Daisy and Tom, who
had to leave Chicago because of one scandal, have to leave East Egg because of
another. Like Klipspringer, the boarder, they all go wherever is most convenient.

Honesty

In the opening passages of the novel, Nick relates a piece of advice that his father gave
him in his “younger and more vulnerable years”: to remember whenever he wants to
criticize someone that “all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages [he’s]
had.” That his own father tells him that he should be less critical of others suggests that
he’s an inherently critical person and that his privilege and wealth (his family owns a
successful wholesale hardware business) have made him myopic, insensitive to the
struggles of others and unwilling to admit that his point of view might be flawed.
Fitzgerald inserts this bit of advice at the beginning to color Nick’s narration, making it
less reliable but at the same time far more personal. He introduces Nick as a flawed,
intelligent, and often poetic narrator, but the reader, finding beauty in his narrative voice,
is inclined to keep reading anyway, even when he says conceitedly, “I am one of the
few honest people that I have ever known,” at the end of Chapter III.

Hope

In Chapter I, Gatsby is described as having an “extraordinary gift for hope,” meaning

that he has a sensitivity to life and a sense of its possibilities that surpass those of
others. His hope is more or less synonymous with his ability to dream (if not with his
dream itself). The people who live in the Valley of Ashes, then, are “hopeless”
specifically because they’ve lost most of their ability to dream and realize their dreams.
George Wilson’s only hope of a better life is to sell off Tom’s car and use the profits to
move out west with Myrtle. When this last shred of hope dies, his only real desire is to
kill the person responsible, whom he mistakenly assumes to be Gatsby. In that sense,
Chapter VIII, when Wilson shoots Gatsby, is an account of what happens when hope
dies.

Life and Death

Fitzgerald establishes the themes of life and death late in Chapter II, when the drunk
party guest crashes the car with Owl Eyes in it. Thus, cars become symbols of death or,
when the characters aren’t crashing them, of one’s social status. In Chapter V, during
the tour of Gatsby’s house, Nick thinks he hears Owl Eyes’s “ghostly” laughter
emanating from one of the many rooms. It is almost as if Gatsby’s house has become a
giant, empty tomb where he awaits his death.

The Great Gatsby, Critical Edition (Critical Survey of Contemporary Fiction)

First published in 1925, THE GREAT GATSBY was not a commercial success; both
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE and THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DAMNED outsold it by a
margin of more than two to one during Fitzgerald’s lifetime. Initial reviews were mixed; a
few critics—and some of Fitzgerald’s fellow-novelists—immediately appreciated what he
had achieved. By the time of his death, in 1940, the novel was largely forgotten.

As sometimes happens in the curious business of literary reputations, Fitzgerald’s death

prompted a revival of interest in his work. In 1941, THE GREAT GATSBY was reissued,
bound in a single volume with the unfinished novel THE LAST TYCOON, which was
being published for the first time. A year later, THE GREAT GATSBY was reissued on
its own, and several reprints followed in the 1940’s. By the 1950’s, it was widely
regarded as one of the major novels of its period.

Today, GATSBY is almost universally acknowledged as an American classic. It is one of

those exceptional books that survive both inside and outside the classroom; it’s also a
novel that writers continue to read with profit, as interviews with many contemporary
American novelists attest.

All the more important, then, to have a text that is as accurate as possible. The term
“critical edition” may suggest a volume so dense with textual apparatus as to be
unreadable. In this instance, however, Matthew Bruccoli (an eminent bibliographer and
biographer who has published extensively on Fitzgerald) has made readability a high
priority. The volume begins with an introductory essay by Bruccoli, followed by a clean
corrected text of the novel. The end matter includes not only a list of emendations and
textual notes, of interest primarily to specialists, but also explanatory notes clearly
intended for students—all this and more in a compact, well-designed volume.

Evaluation of the textual decisions made by Bruccoli and the late Fredson Bowers, who
served as a consultant on the project, will have to await the considered judgment of
scholars. The underlying philosophy of the edition—to make the fruits of textual
scholarship available to the widest possible readership—is only to be applauded.

Three Themes in The Great Gatsby

Whilst The Great Gatsby explores a number of themes, none is more prevalent than
that of the corruption of the American dream. The American dream is the concept that,
in America, any person can be successful as long he or she is prepared to work hard
and use his natural gifts.

Gatsby appears to be the embodiment of this dream—he has risen from being a poor
farm boy with no prospects to being rich, having a big house, servants, and a large
social circle attending his numerous functions. He has achieved all this in only a few
short years, having returned from the war penniless.

On the surface, Fitgerald appears to be suggesting that, whilst wealth and all its
trappings are attainable, status and position are not. Whilst Gatsby has money and
possessions, he is unable to find happiness. Those who come to his home do not
genuinely like Gatsby—they come for the parties, the food, the drink and the company,
not for Gatsby. Furthermore, they seem to despise Gatsby, taking every opportunity to
gossip about him. Many come and go without even taking the time to meet and few ever
thank him for his hospitality. Even Daisy appears unable to cope with the reality of
Gatsby’s lower class background. Gatsby is never truly one of the elite—his dream is
just a façade.

However, Fitzgerald explores much more than the failure of the American dream—he is
more deeply concerned with its total corruption. Gatsby has not achieved his wealth
through honest hard work, but through bootlegging and crime. His money is not simply
‘new’ money—it is dirty money, earned through dishonesty and crime. His wealthy
lifestyle is little more than a façade, as is the whole person Jay Gatsby. Gatsby has
been created from the dreams of the boy James Gatz. It is not only Gatsby who is
corrupt. Nick repeatedly says that he is the only honest person he knows. The story is
full of lying and cheating. Even Nick is involved in this deception, helping Gatsby and
Daisy in their deceit and later concealing the truth about Myrtle’s death. The society in
which the novel takes place is one of moral decadence. Whether their money is
inherited or earned, its inhabitant are morally decadent, living life in quest of cheap
thrills and with no seeming moral purpose to their lives.

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gastby, Fitzgerald uses vivid descriptions and applies
his knowledge of literary devices. He uses a variety of devices to symbolize something
much more intricate. He uses imagery to describe things so precisely that the picture
appears in your head as though you are dreaming, and in which you are living in your
dreams. An extraordinary amount of settings are used from houses to mansions,
different locations, east egg and west egg. Many more are used, allegory, allusions to
sports, tone, and syntax.

Symbols, a device that is found through out the 9 chapters, that put life into the novel.
Grey, the color found everywhere in the valley of ashes, symbolizes lack of spirit or life,
such as the pain Wilson had when his wife, Myrtle died in a car crash. Nick Carraway, the
narrator notes that "The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic- their retinas
are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow
spectacles". This might symbolize the eyes of god looking over what is happening in
East and West Egg. Him having no face might symbolize that peace are but also it might
symbolize the eyes of young Mr. Carraway. He is the observor in this twisted tale, who
has no opinions and just tells the story as is. He is the "Doctor T.J. Eckleburg" just sitting
and watching what is going on. The green light, that is seen by Jay Gatsby across the
bay is more than a light it is a sign of hope. Green, the color of hope, is emitting from
the dock of his beloved Daisy and "Gatsby believed in the green light" showing that he
stilll had hope for pulling daisy back to his arms. Money can also symbolize hope
because Gatsby promised himself to be successful and to throw big parties for false
hopes of winning back Daisy.

Imagery, a literary device that appeals to the five senses of the human body. I can just
imagine that "the interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the dust-
covered wreck of a ford which crouched in a dim corner." In mind, I see the blank
interior and wrecked car, these are the images that pop into my head because of the
way that Fitzgerald describes them. The way that he described "Gatsby's gorgeous car
[lurching] up the rocky drive to [his] door and [how it] gave out a burst of melody from
its three-noted horn" just automatically plays a movie in my head.

Syntax, the grammatical arrangement of the words in a sentence, is used to classify the
rich and the poor. For example George Wilson, when talking to Tom at the garage, uses
slang by replacing does not with don't, when he asks, "Works pretty slow, don't he?"
This shows that Wilson is of a lower class with improper grammer and improper
conditions of living, which is shown by him living in the valley of ashes. On the other
hand, Nick has better grammer and a marvelous home on East Egg.

Setting, the place or places where the story is set. The setting of this story is in the
Summer of 1922, or as what Fitzgerald calls it the "post-jazz era" in Long Island and New
York City. Fitzgerald uses the setting as another way to separate the higher class and
lower class. He has the West Egg for the newly rich people and he has East Egg for the
rich established people. He also uses different settings to represent different events,
such as The Valley of Ashes, a place of destruction, the place where Myrtle dies.

Allusion, a casual reference is used many times in this book. Like when Wilson talks to
Michaelis an affair that his wife has, they discuss the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg by Wilson
saying "God sees everything" when he is talking about the billboard. This is an allusion
to the all powerful god, who is "always watching" you. Another allusion was when Nick
talks about how his books on banking and crediting would unlock the "shining secrets
that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew." All three of these men are wealthy
and have great money making abilites and thus if he studies the books he will become
just like them. Another example is when at Gatsby's party, music by Mr. Vladimir Tostoff
was going to play, and it had :attracted so much attention at Carnegie Hall," which is an
allusion to a great event because it is a huge concert hall. For instance when in Ch.4
Gatsby told Nick that Meyer Wolfsheim is "the man who fixed the World's Series back in
1919," an allusion to Meyer's "un-American" nature.

Tone, a particular mental state of disposition, is changed only a few times throughout
this book. At the beginning of the book, the tone is happy and cheery because everyone
is in joy and love. Nick is living a good life and everyone is happy with their lives, or as it
seems. But towards the middle the tone starts becoming confused and uncertain
because of many reasons. First of, Nick starts realizing all the affairs that are going on.
Than he figures out that Gatsby is in love with Daisy. In the end, the tone is horrifying
because all the deaths have occurred and Nick is upset that all this happened.

Allegory, a novel in which the apparent meaning of the characters and events is used to
symbolize a deeper moral or spiritual meaning.

A Great American Character Analysis: Is Gatsby Indeed Great?

By Karielle Stephanie Gam

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With the new Baz Luhrmann movie sweeping the globe, original novel topping bestseller
charts, and fandoms exploding over the Internet, I was inspired to share my two cents
on the title character’s so-called “greatness,” inspired by a lecture on The Great
Gatsbyfrom my comparative lit class last year. Fitzgerald is infamous for his social
criticism of the Roaring Twenties, and even within solely the title of his book — which I
don’t think could be any more obviously satirical — his opinions of the rich and the
famous — the young and the beautiful — ring perfectly clear.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s characterization of Jay Gatsby demonstrates the extent to which

Gatsby transcends his own lowly roots and creates the impression of being “great.”
Throughout the procession of the 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, readers are exposed
to Gatsby’s various amazing achievements, including his ascent into excessive wealth
and reputation, his long-standing and eventually successful pursuit of Daisy Buchanan,
and his tragic, galvanized death. However, as with the Great Houdini, Fitzgerald’s
“Great” Gatsby emerges from a logical and almost karmic reality through the exposure
of his ill-explained fortune and questionable social status, his fleeting and doomed-from-
the-start relationship with Daisy, and his unmemorable passing; this is what shatters the
glimmering illusion and ultimately conveys that Jay Gatsby, contrary to the book’s title,
is not great after all.

The diction that describes Gatsby’s mannerisms and appearance is, from the beginning
of the novel, rich and opulent, paralleling his lavish, garish position in society. His wealth
is never cloaked; from the mansion, to the weekly parties, to the countless dress shirts
and expensive cars, it is evident that Gatsby is rich as sin and is initially, through his
inclusion in the nouveau riche, the epitome of the American dream. He’s handsome,
he’s rich, he’s socially reputable... or so readers think. As the plot unravels, Fitzgerald
exposes Gatsby’s obscure roots, including his partygoers’ assumptions that he killed a
man or is actually a German spy from the Third Reich, and the fact that he can never
get the story regarding how he climbed to prosperity, straight. His rather indeterminate
and shady manner of “business” with Meyer Wolfsheim and inability to explicitly explain,
even to Nick, what trade he is in, demonstrates that his crisp, rich image is not what he
says it is. The haze of the glorification of money hides this suspicious background,
which is why Gatsby is so great in the beginning of the book, but falls utterly hard by the
end.

From Daisy’s point of view, reuniting with Gatsby is miserable not only because of the
inextinguished flame between the two past lovers, but also because Gatsby now has in
his grasp, the upper-class lifestyle she so needs, yet she is not with him. This is the
mindset that prevails when Gatsby first appears in the story. Now that he is rich, he
deserves Daisy, the woman he has never stopped pursuing. His love for Daisy runs
deeply and unfalteringly, and when he sees her again for the first time in five years, is
even rekindled. The notion that after all the time and trouble, he finally gets the girl is
stunning to readers because such a long, grueling pursuit being fulfilled is an amazing
feat; Gatsby is extraordinary for having defeated insurmountable odds fro the woman he
loves. However, as with his money, by the novel’s end, his relationship with Daisy, too,
fails. In the confrontational scene between Gatsby, Tom, and Daisy (with Jordan and
Nick as spectators), Gatsby demands Daisy admit that she never loved Tom; but she
cannot. Distraught with emotion, Daisy, exclaims to him, “I did love [Tom] once — but I
loved you too,” which does not suffice for Gatsby. Gatsby wants Daisy’s whole love, her
unadulterated and exclusive love, but is jarred by the startling reality that due to the
passage of time, and the cruelty of fate, Daisy loved Tom when she could not love
Gatsby. Gatsby’s pursuit of her, of the past, is now a void because something has
happened that he cannot — and will never be able to — control: Daisy and Tom’s
marriage. Thus, the illusion of Gatsby’s successful, extraordinary possession of true
love is also broken, and a harsher truth that “even alone [Daisy] can’t say [she] never
loved Tom,” revealed. Gatsby may have seemed great for getting Daisy back, but the
clutch was only fleeting, and it certainly wasn’t for keeps; this ultimately marks his failure
to possess her for good and to surface with romantic success.

Lastly, Gatsby’s final proceeding shows his downfall. Dying young, he should be
immortalized, or at least revered for dying for love, for dying a tragic, hopeless death.
Gatsby’s murder should idealize and romanticize the consequences of stubborn love,
but it instead has the exact opposite effect: it goes unremembered. Given his social and
financial prowess, he should have died a martyr, or at least have been eulogized, but no
one — exactly no one — even bothers to attend his funeral. Gatsby’s unremarkable
death is Fitzgerald’s last reminder to readers that although Gatsby had his great
moments, they eventually led to his demise, and that as a whole, he is far, far from
great.

The tragedy of Gatsby having everything, then suddenly nothing, demonstrates his
irrefutable distance from greatness. He may have been rich, temporarily romantically
successful, and have died young, but simultaneously, the money lacked virtue and
acceptable regard, his love was rendered futile by the past, which he could not change
nor hold sway over, and his death was disappointingly unremarkable. Like Harry
Houdini, Gatsby was a compelling — and daresay effective — illusionist, but that is all
he amounted to be: an illusionist. His final fate — his fall from greatness — reveals
everything we wanted to, but could never be.

The 7 Major Great Gatsby Themes

Money and Materialism: Everyone in the novel is money-obsessed, whether they were
born with money (Tom, Daisy, Jordan, and Nick to a lesser extent), whether they made
a fortune (Gatsby), or whether they’re eager for more (Myrtle and George). So why are
the characters so materialistic?How does their materialism affect their choices? Get a
guide to each of the characters’ material motivations and how they shape the novel.

Society and Class: Building on the money and materialism theme, the novel draws
clear distinctions between the kind of money you have: old money (inherited) or new
money (earned). And there is also a clear difference between the lifestyles of the
wealthy, who live on Long Island and commute freely to Manhattan, and the working
class people stuck in between, mired in Queens. By the end of the novel, our main
characters who are not old money (Gatsby, Myrtle, and George) are all dead, while the
inherited-money club is still alive. What does this say about class in Gatsby? Why is
their society so rigidly classist? Learn more about the various social classes in Gatsby
and how they affect the novel’s outcome.

The American Dream: The American Dream is the idea anyone can make it in America
(e.g. gain fame, fortune, and success) through enough hard work and determination. So
is Jay Gatsby an example of the dream? Or does his involvement in crime suggest the
Dream isn’t actually real? And where does this leave the Wilsons, who are also eager to
improve their lot in life but don’t make it out of the novel alive? Finally, do the closing
pages of the novel endorse the American Dream or write it off as a fantasy? Learn
what the American Dream is and how the novel sometimes believes in it, and
sometimes sees it as a reckless fantasy.

Love, Desire, and Relationships: All of the major characters are driven by love,
desire, or both, but only Tom and Daisy’s marriage lasts out of the novel’s five major
relationships and affairs. So is love an inherently unstable force? Or do the characters
just experience it in the wrong way? Get an in-depth guide to each of Gatsby’s major
relationships.

Death and Failure: Nick narrates Gatsby two years after the events in question, and
since he’s obviously aware of the tragedy awaiting not only Gatsby but Myrtle and
George as well, the novel has a sad, reflective, even mournful tone. Is the novel
saying that ambition is inherently dangerous (especially in a classist society like
1920s America), or is it more concerned with the danger of Gatsby’s intense desire to
reclaim the past? Explore those questions here.

Morality and Ethics: The novel is full of bad behavior: lying, cheating, physical abuse,
crime, and finally murder. Yet none of the characters ever answer to the law, and God is
only mentioned as an exclamation, or briefly projected onto an advertisement. Does the
novel push for the need to fix this lack of morality, or does it accept it as the normal
state of affairs in the “wild, wild East”?

The Mutability of Identity: Mutability just means “subject to change,” so this theme is
about how changeable (or not!) personal identity is. Do people really change? Or are
our past selves always with us? And how would this shape our desire to reclaim parts of
our past? Gatsby wants to have it both ways: to change himself from James Gatz into
the sophisticated, wealthy Jay Gatsby, but also to preserve his past with Daisy. Does he
fail because it’s impossible to change? Because it’s impossible to repeat the past? Or
both?

List of the Major Characters in The Great Gatsby

Click on each character's name to read an in-depth article analyzing their place in the
novel.

Nick Carraway - our narrator, but not the book’s main character. Coming East from the
Midwest to learn the bond business, Nick is horrified by the materialism and
superficiality he finds in Manhattan and Long Island. He ends up admiring Gatsby as a
hopeful dreamer and despising the rest of the people he encounters.

Jay Gatsby - a self-made man who is driven by his love for, and obsession with, Daisy
Buchanan. Born a poor farmer, Gatsby becomes materially successful through crime
and spends the novel trying to recreate the perfect love he and Daisy had five years
before. When she cannot renounce her marriage, Gatsby’s dream is crushed.

Daisy Buchanan - a very rich young woman who is trapped in a dysfunctional marriage
and oppressed by her meaningless life. Daisy has an affair with Gatsby, but is ultimately
unwilling to say that she has been as obsessed with him as he has with her, and goes
back to her unsatisfying, but also less demanding, relationship with her husband, Tom.

Tom Buchanan - Daisy’s very rich, adulterous, bullying, racist husband. Tom is having
a physically abusive affair with Myrtle Wilson. He investigates Gatsby and reveals some
measure of his criminal involvement, demonstrating to Daisy that Gatsby isn’t someone
she should run off with. After Daisy runs over Myrtle Wilson, Tom makes up with
Daisy and they skip town together.

Jordan Baker - a professional golfer who has a relationship with Nick. At first, Jordan is
attractive because of her jaded, cynical attitude, but then Nick slowly sees that her
inveterate lying and her complete lack of concern for other people are deal breakers.

Myrtle Wilson - the somewhat vulgar wife of a car mechanic who is unhappy in her
marriage. Myrtle is having an affair with Tom, whom she likes for his rugged and brutal
masculinity and for his money. Daisy runs Myrtle over, killing her in a gruesome and
shocking way.

George Wilson - Myrtle’s browbeaten, weak, and working class husband. George is
enraged when he finds out about Myrtle’s affair, and then that rage is transformed into
unhinged madness when Myrtle is killed. George kills Gatsby and himself in the murder-
suicide that seems to erase Gatsby and his lasting impact on the world entirely.

List of the Major Themes in The Great Gatsby

Get a broad overview of the novel’s themes, or click on each theme to read a detailed
individual analysis.

Money and Materialism - the novel is fascinated by how people make their money,
what they can and can’t buy with it, and how the pursuit of wealth shapes the decisions
people make and the paths their lives follow. In the novel, is it possible to be happy
without a lot of money? Is it possible to be happy with it?

Society and Class - the novel can also be read as a clash between the old money set
and the nouveau riche strivers and wannabes that are trying to either become them or
replace them. If the novel ends with the strivers and the poor being killed off and the old
money literally getting away with murder, who wins this class battle?

The American Dream - does the novel endorse or mock the dream of the rags-to-
riches success story, the ideal of the self-made man? Is Gatsby a successful example
of what’s possible through hard work and dedication, or a sham whose crime and death
demonstrate that the American Dream is a work of fiction?

Love, Desire, and Relationships - most of the major characters are driven by either
love or sexual desire, but none of these connections prove lasting or stable. Is the novel
saying that these are destructive forces, or is just that these characters use and feel
them in the wrong way?

Death and Failure - a tone of sadness and elegy (an elegy is a song of sadness for the
dead) suffuses the book, as Nick looks back at a summer that ended with three violent
deaths and the defeat of one man’s delusional dream. Are ambition and overreach
doomed to this level of epic failure, or are they examples of the way we sweep the past
under the rug when looking to the future?

Morality and Ethics - despite the fact that most of the characters in this novel cheat on
their significant others, one is an accidental killer, one is an actual criminal, and one a
murderer, at the end of the novel no one is punished either by the law or by public
censure. Is there a way to fix the lawless, amoral, Wild East that this book describes, or
does the replacement of God with a figure from a billboard mean that this is a
permanent state of affairs?

The Mutability of Identity - the key to answering the title’s implied questions (What
makes Gatsby great? Is Gatsby great?) is whether it is possible to change oneself for
good, or whether past history and experiences leave their marks forever. Gatsby wants
to have it both ways: to change himself from James Gatz into a glamorous figure, but
also to recapitulate and preserve in amber a moment from his past with Daisy. Does he
fail because it’s impossible to change? Because it’s impossible to repeat the past? Or
both?