The Great Gatsby

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This article is about the novel. For the film, TV and opera adaptations, see The Great Gatsby (disambiguation).
The Great Gatsby
The cover of the first edition of The Great Gatsby, 1925.
Cover of the first edition, 1925.
AuthorF. Scott Fitzgerald
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreNovel
PublisherCharles Scribner's Sons
Publication date
April 10, 1925
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBNNA & reissue ISBN 0-7432-7356-7 (2004 paperback edition) Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character

The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published on April 10, 1925, it is set in Long Island's North Shore and New York City during the summer of 1922.

The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age." Following the shock and chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the "roaring" 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol as mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers and led to an increase in organized crime. Although Fitzgerald, like Nick Carraway in his novel, idolized the riches and glamor of the age, he was uncomfortable with the unrestrained materialism and the lack of morality that went with it.

Although it was adapted into both a Broadway play and a Hollywood film within a year of publication, it was not popular upon initial printing, selling fewer than 25,000 copies during the remaining fifteen years of Fitzgerald's life. It was largely forgotten during the Great Depression and World War II. After its republishing in 1945 and 1953, it quickly found a wide readership and is today widely regarded as a paragon of the Great American Novel. The Great Gatsby has become a standard text in high school and university courses on American literature in countries around the world, and is ranked second in the Modern Library's list of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century. Time included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.[1]

Writing and publication

With Gatsby, Fitzgerald made a conscious departure from the writing process of his previous novels. He started planning it in June 1922, after completing his play The Vegetable, and began composing it in 1923. He ended up discarding most of a false start, some of which would resurface in the story "Absolution".[2] Unlike his previous works, Fitzgerald intended to edit and reshape Gatsby thoroughly, believing that it held the potential to launch him toward literary acclaim. He told his editor Max Perkins that the novel was a "consciously artistic achievement" and a "purely creative work — not trashy imaginings as in my stories but the sustained imagination of a sincere and yet radiant world". He added later, during the editing process, that he felt "an enormous power in me now, more than I've ever had". [3]

Oheka Castle on the Gold Coast of Long Island was a partial inspiration for Gatsby's estate.[4]

After the birth of their child, the Fitzgeralds moved to Great Neck, Long Island in October 1922, appropriating Great Neck as the setting for The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald's neighbors included such newly wealthy New Yorkers as writer Ring Lardner, actor Lew Fields and comedian Ed Wynn.[2] Great Neck, on the shores of Long Island Sound, sat across a bay from Manhasset Neck or Cow Neck Peninsula, which includes the communities of Port Washington, Manorhaven, Port Washington North and Sands Point, and was home to many of New York's wealthiest established families. In his novel, Great Neck became the new-money peninsula of "West Egg" and Manhasset Neck the old-money peninsula of "East Egg".[5]

Progress on the novel was slow. In May 1923, the Fitzgeralds moved to the French Riviera, where the novel would come to completion. In November, he sent the draft to his publisher Perkins and his agent Harold Ober. The Fitzgeralds again relocated, this time to Rome, for the winter. Fitzgerald made revisions through the winter after Perkins informed him that the novel was too vague and Gatsby's biographical section too long. Content after a few rounds of revision, Fitzgerald returned the final batch of revised galleys in the middle of February 1925.[6]

Original cover art

The cover of The Great Gatsby is among the most celebrated pieces of jacket art in American literature.[7] A little-known artist named Francis Cugat was commissioned to illustrate the book while Fitzgerald was in the midst of writing it. The cover was completed before the novel, with Fitzgerald so enamored of it that he told his publisher he had "written it into" the novel.[7]

After several initial sketches of various completeness, Cugat produced the Art Deco-style gouache of a pair of eyes hovering over the bright lights of an amusement park. The woman has no nose but full and voluptuous lips. Descending from the right eye is a green tear. The irises of the eyes depict a pair of reclining nudes.[7]

Fitzgerald's remarks about incorporating the painting into the novel led to the interpretation that the eyes are reminiscent of those of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg (the novel's erstwhile proprietor of a faded commercial billboard near George Wilson's auto-repair shop) which Fitzgerald described as "blue and gigantic — their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose." Although this passage has some resemblance to the painting, a closer explanation can be found in the description of Daisy Buchanan as the "girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs".[7]

Title

The last piece to fall into place was the title. Fitzgerald was always ambivalent about it, shifting between Gatsby; Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires; Trimalchio; Trimalchio in West Egg; On the Road to West Egg; Under the Red, White, and Blue; Gold-Hatted Gatsby; and The High-Bouncing Lover. Initially, he preferred Trimalchio, after the crude parvenu in Petronius's Satyricon. Unlike Fitzgerald's reticent agonist, Trimalchio actively participated in the audacious and libidinous orgies that he hosted. That Fitzgerald refers to Gatsby by the proposed title just once in the entire novel reinforces the view that it would have been a misnomer. As Tony Tanner observes, however, there are subtle similarities between the two.[8]

On November 7, 1924, Fitzgerald wrote decisively to Perkins — "I have now decided to stick to the title I put on the book [...] Trimalchio in West Egg" — but was eventually persuaded that the reference was too obscure and that people would not be able to pronounce it. His wife and Perkins both expressed their preference for The Great Gatsby and, in December, Fitzgerald agreed.[9] A month before publication, after a final review of the proofs, he asked if it would be possible to re-title it Trimalchio or Gold-Hatted Gatsby, but Perkins advised against it. On March 19, Fitzgerald asked if the book could be renamed Under the Red White and Blue, but it was at that stage too late to change. The Great Gatsby was published on April 10, 1925. Fitzgerald remarked that "the title is only fair, rather bad than good".[10]

Plot

Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby, is a young man from a patrician Midwestern family, who graduates from Yale in 1915; after fighting in World War I and an unsatisfactory return to the Midwest, he moves to New York City to "learn the bond business" in "the spring of twenty-two." Nick declares that, following his father's advice, he avoids judging people: a habit that has caused trouble, exemplified by events concerning a man named Gatsby.

Nick explains that in 1922 he was renting a bungalow sandwiched between two mansions in West Egg, a community of wealthy parvenus on Long Island Sound. Across the bay was East Egg, inhabited by the "old aristocracy", including Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Daisy is Nick's second cousin once removed; Nick knew of her husband Tom, a celebrated polo player at Yale. Nick describes the Buchanans through a visit to their opulent East Egg mansion: although phenomenally wealthy, Tom's glory days are behind him; he is a brutish, overbearing dilettante and Daisy, although engaging, cheerful, and attractive, is pampered and superficial with a largely ignored three-year-old daughter. Nick detects a strain in the relationship and Daisy's friend Jordan Baker, a well-known lady golfer, tells him that Tom has a mistress in New York City.

Tom offers Nick a lift to the city. On the way they stop at a shabby garage owned by George Wilson, where Nick is introduced to the owner's brassy wife, Myrtle. Her husband has no suspicion that she is Tom's mistress. Nick accompanies the couple to their urban love-nest, where Myrtle presides over a pretentious party that includes her sister Catherine. Catherine approves of Myrtle's affair and informs Nick that both lovers cannot stand the people they married and would marry each other if Tom's wife was not a Catholic who, "doesn't believe in divorce," something Nick knows to be untrue. Nick finds the evening increasingly unbearable but is unable to leave until Tom breaks Myrtle's nose in a spat. Nick leaves with Chester McKee, a would-be artistic photographer. After a strange night of drunkenness, Nick wakens to blearily go off to his job as a bond salesman.

Nick's next-door neighbor is the wealthy and mysterious Jay Gatsby, who throws lavish parties hosting hundreds of people. Nick receives an invitation from Gatsby's chauffeur and attends. The party is wild and fun, but he finds that none of the guests know much about Gatsby and rumors about the man are contradictory. Many have never met their host, as the parties are open and guests often attend uninvited. Nick runs into Jordan Baker, but they are separated while searching for Gatsby. A man strikes up a conversation with Nick, claiming to recognise him from the US Army's First Division during the Great War. Nick mentions his difficulty in finding their host and the man reveals himself to be Gatsby, surprising Nick, who had expected him to be older and not as personable. Gatsby invites Nick to more get-togethers, and an odd friendship begins.

One day Gatsby appears in a yellow roadster and drives Nick to New York City, irritating him with the odd statement that Jordan will be asking Nick for a favor on Gatsby's behalf. Gatsby presents a clichéd description of his life as a wealthy dilettante and war hero to an incredulous Nick, but the latter is convinced when Gatsby displays a Montenegrin war decoration. Gatsby introduces a bemused Nick to underworld figure Meyer Wolfsheim. Nick then sees Tom and tries to introduce Gatsby, but Gatsby disappears.

Jordan reveals to Nick that Gatsby fell in love with Daisy before the war and hosts parties hoping she will visit. Gatsby has asked Jordan to ask Nick to get him a meeting with Daisy. Nick agrees: the reunion is initially awkward, but Gatsby and Daisy begin a love affair. An affair also begins for Nick and Jordan, but Nick knows of Jordan's shortcomings and predicts that their relationship will be superficial.

Daisy invites Gatsby and Nick to her mansion and, accompanied by Tom and Jordan Baker, they depart for a hotel in the city at Tom's suggestion. Tom also insists that he and Gatsby switch cars; he takes advantage of Gatsby's compliance by flaunting Gatsby's roadster to George Wilson. At the hotel, Tom notices Gatsby's love for Daisy and confronts Gatsby about his affair with her. Gatsby urges Daisy to say that she never loved Tom; Daisy says that although she did love him, she loved Gatsby as well. Tom mockingly tells Gatsby that nothing can happen between him and Daisy. Gatsby retorts that the only reason Daisy married Tom was because he (Gatsby) was too poor to afford to marry Daisy at the time. Tom visibly loses his composure and alleges that Gatsby is a bootlegger and expresses his loathing for him. Gatsby tries to defend himself to Daisy, but Nick and Tom observe that he fails and that Daisy is now beyond his reach. Confident that he has bested Gatsby, Tom tells Daisy to drive off with Gatsby in Gatsby's car, while Tom takes his time getting home with Nick and Jordan.

George Wilson has also become suspicious; he too has been arguing with his wife. Myrtle runs outside only to be struck and killed by Gatsby's car, which Daisy is driving. Daisy and Gatsby speed away. Later, Tom, Jordan and Nick notice a commotion by the garage on their way to East Egg and stop. George rants about having seen a yellow car and Tom tells George that the car wasn't his but was Gatsby's, but George doesn't seem to listen and Tom, Jordan, and Nick leave. The half-crazed George makes a connection between the driver of the car and Myrtle's lover and resolves to pursue it.

Nick learns the truth about the accident while breakfasting with Gatsby. Gatsby is depressed, unsure whether Daisy still loves him and hoping for a call from her. Seeing himself as Gatsby's closest friend, Nick advises Gatsby to leave for a week. "They're [Daisy, Tom, Jordan] a rotten crowd," Nick says, "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."

George appears at the Buchanan mansion with a gun, finding Tom packing to escape with Daisy. Tom, unaware of Daisy's culpability, names Gatsby as the driver of the car that killed Myrtle. George finds Gatsby floating in his pool and kills him before committing suicide.

Gatsby's funeral devolves upon Nick, whose attempt to find other mourners is virtually fruitless; not even Gatsby's shady business associates will attend. Apart from Gatsby's servants and Nick, the only other mourners are "Owl Eyes" (a Gatsby party guest) and Gatsby's father, Mr. Gatz. Left in the past by his son, he shows Nick a well-worn photograph Gatsby sent him of his mansion and a notebook from Gatsby's youth that he feels illustrates his son's drive and ambition.

Nick severs connections with Jordan (who claims to be engaged to another man), and after a brief run-in with Tom, Nick returns permanently to the Midwest, reflecting on Gatsby's dreams and the sad and cyclical nature of the past.

Characters

Major characters

  • Nick Carraway (Narrator)—a 29-year-old (thirty by the end of the book) bond salesman from Minnesota, a Yale graduate, a World War I veteran, and a resident of Long Island. Neighbor of Gatsby.
  • Jay Gatsby (originally James "Jimmy" Gatz)—a young, mysterious millionaire later revealed to be self-made, originally from North Dakota, with shady business connections and an obsessive love for Daisy Fay Buchanan, whom he had met when he was a young officer in World War I.
  • Daisy Buchanan née Fay—an attractive, effervescent young woman; Nick's second cousin, once removed; and the wife of Tom Buchanan. Daisy is believed to have been inspired by Fitzgerald's own youthful romance with Chicago heiress Ginevra King. Gatsby had courted but lost Daisy due to their different social standing, the main reason Fitzgerald believed he had lost Ginevra.[11]
  • "Tom" Buchanan'—an arrogant "old money" millionaire who lives on East Egg, and the husband of Daisy. Buchanan had parallels to 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.[11]
  • George B. Wilson—a mechanic and owner of a garage located at the edge of the valley of ashes, the cuckolded husband of Myrtle and the one who determined Gatsby's fate.
  • Myrtle Wilson—George Wilson's wife and Tom Buchanan's mistress.
  • Jordan Baker—She is Daisy Buchanan's long-time friend, a professional golf player with a slightly shady reputation. Fitzgerald told Maxwell Perkins that her character was based on the golfer Edith Cummings, a friend of Ginevra King.[11]

Minor characters

  • Catherine—Myrtle Wilson's sister
  • Chester and Lucille McKee—Myrtle's New York friends
  • "Owl-eyes"—a drunken party-goer whom Nick meets in Gatsby's library and is one of the very few people to attend Gatsby's funeral.
  • Meyer Wolfsheim—a Jewish man Gatsby describes as a gambler who "fixed the World Series". Wolfsheim is a clear allusion to Arnold Rothstein, a New York crime kingpin who was notoriously blamed for the Black Sox Scandal which tainted the 1919 World Series.[12]
  • Ewing Klipspringer—a sponger who virtually lives at Gatsby's mansion
  • Pammy Buchanan—the Buchanans' three-year-old daughter (The age of Pammy has been argued upon. Fitzgerald originally wrote that she was three years old. However, if examined chronologically, her age would only be two. Later publishers have "fixed" this, but Fitzgerald's reason for making Pammy three may not have had to do with actual time. It may have instead been to exemplify the number three's symbolic meaning of hopes and dreams.[citation needed])
  • Henry C. Gatz—Gatsby's somewhat estranged father. He is one of the nine or ten people to show up at Gatsby's funeral.
  • Michaelis—George Wilson's neighbor
  • Dan Cody—Gatsby's mentor as a youth.

Major symbols

  • West Egg - New money, New Aristocracy.[citation needed]
  • East Egg - Old money, Old Aristocracy.[citation needed]
  • Valley of ashes - The downfall of the American dream.[citation needed]
  • Dr. T. J. Eckleburg's eyes - The character Wilson believes they symbolise God's eyes watching over everyone, only for Michaelis to assure him, "That's an advert." [13]
  • The green light - Gatsby's hopes and dreams for the future and, more generally, the American Dream.[14][15]

Reception

The Great Gatsby received mostly positive reviews, but was not the commercial success of Fitzgerald's previous novels This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned. In essence, it failed compared to its predecessors. The book went through two printings. Years later, some of these copies were still unsold.[16] Many of Fitzgerald's literary friends, however, wrote him letters praising the novel.

When Fitzgerald died in 1940, he had been largely forgotten. He believed himself to be a failure. Many of his obituaries mentioned Gatsby as evidence that he had great potential that he never reached. But people began to read his book again, aided in part by the Armed Services Editions giving away around 150,000 copies of Gatsby to the American military in World War II.[17]

In 1951 Arthur Mizener published The Far Side of Paradise, the first biography of Fitzgerald, which sparked further interest in his life and writing, by scholars and the general public. By the 1960s the novel's reputation was established and it is frequently mentioned as one of the great American novels.

Film, TV, theatrical and literary adaptations

The Great Gatsby has been filmed four times:

  1. The Great Gatsby, in 1926 by Herbert Brenon – a silent movie of a stage adaptation, starring Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson, and William Powell. It is a famous example of a lost film. Reviews suggest that it may have been the most faithful adaptation of the novel, but a trailer of the film at National Archives is all that is known to exist;[18]
  2. The Great Gatsby, in 1949 by Elliott Nugent – starring Alan Ladd, Betty Field, and Shelley Winters; for copyright reasons, this film is not readily available;[18]
  3. The Great Gatsby, in 1974, by Jack Clayton – the most famous screen version, starring Robert Redford in the title role with Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan & Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway, with a script by Francis Ford Coppola;[18]
  4. The Great Gatsby, in 2000 by Robert Markowitz – a made-for-TV movie starring Toby Stephens, Paul Rudd and Mira Sorvino.

Famous American author Truman Capote was originally hired as the screenwriter for the 1974 film adaptation. In his screenplay, Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker were both written to be homosexual. After Capote was removed from the project, Coppola rewrote the screenplay.[citation needed]

The 1980 Egyptian film 'al Raghba' (English title 'Desire') by director Mohamed Khan is based on The Great Gatsby.[citation needed]

Australian film director and screenwriter Baz Luhrman has also announced that he will adapt the book into a movie, with principal photography scheduled to commence in 2010. Luhrman is also the director of the critically acclaimed Moulin Rouge!.[citation needed]

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

In the popular HBO television show Entourage, the character Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) is hired by Martin Scorsese for a film adaptation of the book, where he is to play Nick.[citation needed]

Stage

The Great Gatsby, a stage adaptation by Owen Davis, was first performed at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City on Feb 2, 1926 in a production directed by George Cukor with James Rennie and Florence Eldridge.

The Great Gatsby, in a new adaptation by Simon Levy, was performed for the opening of the new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July 2006. This was billed as "the first authorized stage version of the novel since 1926".

However, two months earlier, in Brussels, Belgium, The Kunsten Festival des Arts debuted Gatz, a six-hour production by the New York theater company Elevator Repair Service. Set in a ramshackle contemporary office building, Gatz utilized the entire text of Gatsby, at first read by employees at the office building, and eventually acted out by them. Gatz premiered in the U.S. on September 21, 2006, at the Walker Art Center (also in Minneapolis) just eleven days after the closing of The Great Gatsby at The Guthrie.

Also, it has received an adaptation by the Japanese musical theater company Takarazuka Revue in 1991, performed by Snow Troupe. It will be performed by Moon Troupe of the company in 2008.

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 work, which is also called The Great Gatsby, premiered on December 20, 1999.

Books

  • Ernesto Quiñonez's Bodega Dreams adapted The Great Gatsby to Spanish Harlem
  • The Great Gatsby, a graphic novel adaptation by Australian cartoonist Nicki Greenberg
  • The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian imagines the later years of Daisy and Tom Buchanan's marriage as a social worker in 2007 investigates the possibility that a deceased elderly homeless person is Daisy's son.

Radio

Notes

  1. ^ http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/
  2. ^ a b Bruccoli 2000, p. 53–54
  3. ^ Leader, Zachary, "Daisy packs her bags", London Review of Books
  4. ^ Bruccoli 2000, p. 45
  5. ^ Bruccoli 2000, p. 38–39
  6. ^ Bruccoli 2000, p. 54–56
  7. ^ a b c d Scribner, Charles III. "Celestial Eyes/ Scribner III Celestial Eyes—from Metamorphosis to Masterpiece". In Bruccoli 2000, p. 160–68. Originally published in 1991.
  8. ^ Tanner's introduction to the Penguin edition (2000), p. vii-viii.
  9. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 206–07
  10. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 215–17
  11. ^ a b c Bruccoli 2000, p. 9–11
  12. ^ Bruccoli 2000, p. 29
  13. ^ [1]
  14. ^ Symbolism: The Green Light, Homework Online, Inc, 2009, retrieved 2009-04-09
  15. ^ The Great Gatsby: Themes, Motifs & Symbols, SparkNotes LLC, 2009, retrieved 2009-04-09
  16. ^ Bruccoli 2000, p. 175
  17. ^ Bruccoli 2000, p. 217
  18. ^ a b c Winston Dixon, Wheeler (2003), "The Three Film Versions of The Great Gatsby: A Vision Deferred" ([dead link]), Literature Film Quarterly, retrieved 2008-03-11
  19. ^ BBC World Service programmes - The Great Gatsby

References

  • Bruccoli, Matthew Joseph (ed.) (2000), F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: A Literary Reference, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, ISBN 0786709960 {{citation}}: |first= has generic name (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |unused_data= (help); Unknown parameter |ISBN status= ignored (help)
  • Bruccoli, Matthew Joseph (2002), Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald (2nd rev. ed.), Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, ISBN 1570034559 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |unused_data= (help); Unknown parameter |ISBN status= ignored (help).
  • Curnutt, Kirk (ed.) (2004), A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195153022 {{citation}}: |first= has generic name (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |unused_data= (help); Unknown parameter |ISBN status= ignored (help)
  • Mizener, Arthur (1951), The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
  • Prigozy, Ruth (ed.) (2002), The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521624479 {{citation}}: |first= has generic name (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |unused_data= (help); Unknown parameter |ISBN status= ignored (help)

External links

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Sources

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