FRANCIS SCOTT KEY FITZGERALD

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, often referred to as the laureate of the Jazz Age, was born on 24 September
1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. At the time of Fitzgerald’s birth, America was in transition from the era of
the frontier to a new age of growing cities, rapid technological advance and the rise of what were to
become the giant corporations of the twentieth century.
As his surname suggests, he was of Irish-American stock, from a family that had settled in Maryland. A
distant relative of his on his father’s side, Francis Scott Key, after whom he was named, had written the
patriotic American anthem The Star-Spangled Banner. Fitzgerald was sent to the East Coast at the age of
fifteen to attend the Newman Academy in Hackensack, New Jersey, and in 1913 he entered Princeton
University. In this Ivy League environment, with America poised to assume World Power status, he
discovered at fist hand many of the themes which were profoundly to inform his future literary career. At
Princeton he formed a close and lifelong friendship with Edmund Wilson. He was perceived as a Westerner
in the East; he was not poor but, in proximity to great wealth, felt so; he was so nearly on the “inside track”
that his position, just on the outside, came to haunt him.
America entered the First World War on 6 April 1917, and Fitzgerald joined the US Army that year in the
rank of second lieutenant, having not received a degree from Princeton. He undertook battle training, but
never served on the Western Front in Europe. He was discharged from the army in 1919. In 1920 This Side
of Paradise, largely based on his experiences at Princeton, was published to great critical acclaim, and he
married the beautiful, but fatally flawed Zelda Sayre. Fitzgerald’s life then began to resemble much of his
writing, as he and Zelda made homes in New York, Long Island, Washington, Paris and on the French
Riviera, travelled between the plush hotels of the US and Europe and socialised, on a lavish scale, with the
wealthy, the famous and sometimes the notorious. A collection of short stories, Flappers and Philosophers
(1920), and a second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned (1921), followed the success of This Side of
Paradise.
The Great Gatsby, often considered to be his greatest novel, was published in 1925. There followed years
of dreadful strain for Fitzgerald as he struggled to contain his enormous financial problems and to come to
term with Zelda’s severe mental illness. His next novel, Tender is the Night, did not appear until 1934 as he
was forced to devote his energies to writing for magazines to stave off the constant demands for money.
His last novel, The Last Tycoon, was left unfinished at this death in Hollywood on 21 December 1940 and
was published posthumously in 1941.

THE GREAT GASTBY

The Great Gatsby (1925) is generally considered to be F. Scott Fitzgerald’s finest novel. It is a consummate
summary of the “roaring twenties”, and a work of great originality. It tells the story of the mysterious Jay
Gatsby who inhabits a luxurious mansion on the affluent Long Island shore. Gatsby’s lavish parties for the
“glitterati” of the day have become legendary on the island. The story’s narrator, Nick Carraway, takes a
house just along the shore from the Gatsby mansion, while Nick’s cousin Daisy and her brash but wealthy
husband Tom Buchanan live across the harbour. Gatsby reveals to Nick that he had a brief affair with Daisy
before the war and her marriage to Tom. The purpose of the glittering social occasions and the mystery of
Gatsby himself then emerge.
The plot brilliantly brings our Fitzgerald’s central theme of the dark surrounding the brightest light, the
shallowness of many human friendships and the eerie silence as the syncopated rhythm of the jazz fades. It
is in being a razor-sharp portrayal of the wealthy East Coast American society of the day and a devastating
exposé of the Jazz Age that the novel achieves its great power. Written in an easy style – without complex
literary experimentation – at the height of the author’s maturity, it is now an undisputed classic of
American literature and is one of the great novels of the twentieth century.

The Great Gatsby is a story about the impossibility of recapturing the past and also the difficulty of altering
one’s future. The protagonist of the novel is Jay Gatsby, who is the mysterious and wealthy neighbour of
the narrator, Nick Carraway. Although we know little about Gatsby at first, we know from Nick’s
introduction—and from the book’s title—that Gatsby’s story will be the focus of the novel. As the novel
progresses and Nick becomes increasingly drawn into Gatsby’s complicated world, we learn what Gatsby
wants: Daisy, Nick’s cousin, the girl he once loved. Anything and anyone that stands between Gatsby and
Daisy becomes an antagonist. Although Daisy’s brutish husband Tom is the most obvious antagonist, a
variety of more abstract concepts—such as class difference, societal expectations, and Gatsby’s past lies—
can also be considered antagonists. The most powerful antagonist is time itself, which prevents Gatsby
from recapturing what he lost.
After a brief passage which frames the narrative as Nick’s recollections of a summer from his past, the
narrative is for the most part linear, beginning with Nick’s move to New York, which makes him Gatsby’s
neighbour. Gatsby is wealthy, with a mysterious past that is the subject of much speculation. After meeting
his neighbour at a party, Nick learns that despite Gatsby’s success, he longs only for Daisy. Gatsby’s central
aim through the novel is to see Daisy again and recaptured their shared past. On a trip to the city with
Tom, Nick meets Tom’s mistress, Myrtle. In the rising action of the novel, Nick arranges a reunion between
Gatsby and Daisy, and Jordan tells Nick about Daisy and Gatsby’s history. Gatsby and Daisy fall back in love,
and Gatsby tells Nick one version of his life story. Many of the stories Gatsby tells about himself turn out to
be lies or half-truths. The fantastic nature of his stories gives Gatsby’s history a mythical quality, which
reinforces the sense of him as a tragic hero.
Gatsby and Daisy are briefly happy together, and Nick gets drawn into their romance, even though the
outlook for the couple’s future seems hopeless, largely because of Gatsby’s inability to separate his dreams
from reality. Both the reader and Nick can see the disparity between Gatsby’s idealized image of the Daisy
he knew five years earlier, and the actual character of Daisy herself. Fitzgerald presents Daisy as a shallow,
materialistic character, reinforcing the sense that Gatsby is chasing a dream, rather than a real person:
“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams… it had
gone beyond her, beyond everything.” On an outing into the city, Gatsby erupts and tells everyone in the
room that he and Daisy are in love and are going to run away together to marry. However, Tom says Daisy
will never leave him, and Daisy is unable to tell Tom she never loved him. Here, for the first time, Gatsby
must confront directly the possibility that his dream cannot be attained, and see Daisy as she currently is,
rather than his idealized remembrance of her. Even at this point, however, he remains convinced she will
ultimately choose him over Tom.
The climax of the novel comes when the group is driving back from New York in two cars, and Myrtle,
Tom’s lover, mistakes Gatsby’s car for Tom’s and runs out into the street and is hit and killed. The car that
kills Myrtle belongs to Gatsby, but Daisy is driving. After this, the action resolves quickly. Gatsby takes the
blame in order to protect Daisy, and Myrtle’s husband, George, kills Gatsby (and then himself) as revenge.
Gatsby has already died a symbolic death at this point, when he realizes that Daisy will not call him and is
not going to run away with him after all. His dream is at last obliterated, and he heads into the morning of
his death facing reality for the first time. Nick describes the world as Gatsby now sees it as unbearably ugly:
“he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass.”
In contrast to the previous obsession with the past, the final passages of Gatsby’s life are concerned with
newness, creation, and the future – one which, lacking his dream of Daisy, he finds hideous.
In the final falling action, the book, Nick must also confront reality, as he realizes his glamorous, enigmatic
neighbour was the poor son of farmers who got mixed up in criminal activities and had no true friends
besides Nick. Nick tries to arrange a funeral for Gatsby, but none of the guests from his lavish parties come.
Daisy and Tom leave town, and Nick is left alone with Gatsby’s father, who reveals the truth of his son’s
humble beginnings as “James Gatz.” After the funeral Nick decides to return to the Midwest, where he is
from, feeling disgusted by the “distortions” of the East. First, though, he visits Gatsby’s house one last
time, boarded up and already defaced with graffiti, and reflects on the power of the green light at the end
of Daisy’s dock that kindled Gatsby hope of recapturing the past up until the moment of his death . “So, we
beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,” he says, including himself in the
tragedy of Gatsby’s fall.