The Great Gatsby

The cover of the Scribner Paperback Fiction Edition, 1995.

The Great Gatsby, a novel written by the American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, was first published on April 10, 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.

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, as well as one of the greatest American literature pieces ever written.

Summary

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The novel is set on Long Island, in Great Neck, New York (where Fitzgerald lived while writing the novel) and Port Washington, New York. However, in the novel, Fitzgerald refers to the two locations as West Egg and East Egg, respectively.

Jay Gatsby, the title character, is a young millionaire living in West Egg with a mysterious and somewhat notorious past. He made his fortune through bootlegging and other corrupt practices such as trading stolen securities. 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 enormous mansion (a "factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy") of 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 Wilson, 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 Tom did so intentionally. 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, the owl-eyed man, who was amazed with Gatsby's incredible library, (i.e. "The books are real"). 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

Symbolism

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 the go-go attitude depicted of the 20s. 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 color 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 clock that Gatbsy, in his nervousness, knocks off the mantlepiece when he is first re-introduced to Daisy is symbolic of his futile desire to turn back time, and to relive the life he once had with Daisy.

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 a pun on "gat," the slang term for pistol which references the illicit way in which he had earned his money.

The air mattress Gatsby struggles in carrying to his pool which he was shot in is a symbol of Jesus carrying a cross to the place of his crucifixion.

There are many images of thin moons, faded moonlight, stars and single body parts. These all imply the fragmented world in which they live and that attempts to grasp for a moment are futile as what exists is temporal and elusive.

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. Gatsby's world, East Egg and West Egg, is one that superficially appears pure, but is less savory at its core. Similarly Daisy projects an image of innocence, but that is later revealed to be merely a facade. She is unconcerned about the consequences of her choices, and acts solely on the basis of what she wants at that moment in time. Even her name relates to this theme, because a daisy is white on the outside, but yellow on the inside. Fitzgerald also changes the color of the car used by Gatsby. At first, Gatsby's car is a cream color, but its color changes to yellow after Daisy and Gatsby strike and kill Myrtle and then leave the scene of the accident.
Water imagery abounds in the novel including the houses and women floating on the sea, the "foul dust floating in the wake" of Gatsby's dreams and the "beat on, boats against the current" image with which the book ends. This suggests the uncertainty of life for the characters and the lack of a solid foundation on which to base their lives. Within modernist art water imagery was common as the characters are always unsure where fate will carry them.

The hot and cold is also a key symbol, to show the book "heating up" (rising action) and cooling down (falling action).

It is notable that many of the female characters have names of flowers (e.g. Myrtle, Daisy). They are all seen primarily as sources of empowerment and meaning for the men in the novel.

Fitzgerald, along with Ernest Hemingway and other expatriates, constantly resurrected 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 and the seemingly toxic output of the capitalist system of which they are the victims. The eyes of T.J. Eckleburg 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.

The consumption of alcohol is also significant. The 1920s society is constructed as a hedonistic, materialistic culture which has become obsessed with money, pleasure and the importance of appearance. Alcohol, it seems, adds to the attraction, ignorance and acceptance of such a world. Nick's perception of the parties changes rapidly as he consumes alcohol, changing them from gaudy and unpleasant to something "elemental and profound". We also sense his acclimatisation to life in New York as he tells us the party in Tom's apartment is only the second time in his life he has gotten drunk. It should also be noted that the story takes place during the era of Prohibition in America, when the manufacture, sale and transport of alcohol were illegal.

Trivia

The introduction features a poem attributed to Thomas Parke D'Invilliers, who is actually a character from Fitzgerald's first novel This Side Of Paradise.

The college that Jay Gatsby was said to have attended for a few days ("disliking it because he had to support himself with janitor work"), St. Olaf College (also alma mater to the character Rose on the television show The Golden Girls, is a liberal arts college located in Northfield, Minnesota, a short drive from where Fitzgerald grew up. [1]

The situation of the Great Gatsby, a wealthy man of mystery haunting the society of his lost love, may owe something to Alexandre Dumas, père's Count of Monte Cristo.

The character of Meyer Wolfsheim in the novel is based on Arnold Rothstein, the real-life kingpin suspected to be behind the fixing of the 1919 World Series.

Fitzgerald originally wanted to title the novel Trimalchio in West Egg, after the character Trimalchio in The Satyricon that Gatsby resembles.

The Great Gatsby was sometimes read out by Andy Kaufman as a type of anti-humor.

Film

The Great Gatsby has been filmed four times:

File:Daisy&Jay.jpg

1974 movie version

In 1926 by Herbert Brenon – A silent movie of a stage adaptation. According to the IMDb, no copies have survived (only a trailer with a few minutes of footage remains);
In 1949 by Elliott Nugent – Starring Alan Ladd;
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;
In 2000 by Robert Markowitz – A made-for-TV movie starring Toby Stephens and Mira Sorvino.

The 2002 film G (released in 2005) by Christopher Scott Cherot claims inspiration from The Great Gatsby.

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