The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is the third novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First, it was published in 1925 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. However, the book gained more popularity in the 1940s. Today, it is viewed as an essential work of American Modernist literature.

Recommended for: Readers interested in classic American literature, the Jazz Age, and critiques of the American Dream. The Great Gatsby is considered a cornerstone of 20th century fiction and would appeal to high school and college students as well as general readers looking to explore this seminal work.

You will:

Gain a deeper understanding of the complex themes Fitzgerald explores, including the pursuit of wealth and status, the moral decline of society, and the emptiness of the American Dream.
Analyze the multifaceted characters, especially the narrator Nick Carraway, the enigmatic Jay Gatsby, and the disillusioned Daisy Buchanan, and how they embody the contradictions of the era.
Appreciate Fitzgerald’s masterful use of symbolism, imagery, and lyrical prose to paint a vivid portrait of 1920s high society and its excesses.
Examine the novel’s depiction of class divisions, gender roles, and the corrosive effects of materialism on human relationships.
Contextualize The Great Gatsby within the broader landscape of modernist literature and its experimental stylistic techniques.
Engage with the timeless themes of love, loss, illusion, and the elusive nature of the American promise of opportunity and reinvention.
Develop critical thinking skills by exploring the novel’s complex moral ambiguities and the implications for contemporary society.
Enhance your understanding of American cultural history and the social upheaval of the post-war era that shaped Fitzgerald’s masterpiece.

Plot

In the novel, Fitzgerald describes events taking place in the summer of 1922 in a fictional town called West Egg. The main character is a young and wealthy man named Jay Gatsby. For years, Gatsby has loved a beautiful woman named Daisy Buchanan. But while Gatsby was away serving in the military, Daisy married another man instead.

The story’s narrator is Nick Carraway, a young stockbroker living in New York in 1922. Nick rents a modest home in West Egg, which is located on Long Island. Next door lives the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby in a grand mansion. Gatsby frequently hosts lavish parties, but his wealth and background remain unclear. Despite the parties, Gatsby is lonely because his true desire is to rekindle his love with Daisy.

While Gatsby was away at war, Daisy married Tom Buchanan, a wealthy former football player from a prominent family. Tom and Daisy live across the bay in East Egg. Sadly, Tom has been having an affair with Myrtle Wilson, whose husband owns a gas station. A tragic car accident involving Myrtle leads to a series of misunderstandings and a terrible outcome.

Main Characters

The main characters of this book are:

Nick Carraway

Nick serves as the narrator. He was born in Minnesota in 1892 and studied at Yale before fighting in World War I. After the war, he moved to New York to begin a career as a bond trader. Nick is an honest, reserved man who refrains from judging others, making him an observant narrator.

Jay Gatsby

Gatsby is a young, fabulously wealthy man living in a West Egg mansion. His weekly parties are infamous, yet no one really knows the truth about Gatsby’s origins or how he amassed his fortune. Gatsby hates poverty and loves luxury. His love for Daisy motivated his pursuit of wealth so he could reunite with her after the war. Gatsby uses his parties and possessions to impress Daisy. To some, he seems arrogant, but to others, a profound figure embodying the American dream.

Daisy Buchanan

Daisy is Nick’s cousin from a respected, aristocratic family. During World War I, Gatsby fell in love with Daisy, and she promised to wait for him. However, when the wealthy Tom Buchanan proposed, the allure of status and money led Daisy to marry him instead while Gatsby was away. The reader sees Daisy through Nick’s perspective – she is cynical, superficial and lives an emotionally empty, privileged life.

Themes

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald explores the contradictions of the American dream, society’s obsession with wealth and status, and the quest for happiness. The novel provides commentary on America’s moral decline following World War I as societal values shifted to favor materialism over human connections. Fitzgerald vividly depicts the excesses of the wealthy class in the Roaring Twenties. Overall, the book stands as a brilliant snapshot of that era’s societal transformation.

Licensing

F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby. Publisher: Charles Scribner’s Sons (New York), 1925. Originally published in 1925. This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. The longest-living author of this work died in 1940, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 83 years or less. Text from Wikisource: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby_(1925)
This digital edition is provided by Ebooks-net in 2024 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. The full text of the license is available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.