The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
PLOT OVERVIEW
Nick Carraway, a young man from
Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the bond
business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy
but unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a group who have made their
fortunes too recently to have established social connections and who are prone
to garish displays of wealth. Nick’s next-door neighbor in West Egg is a
mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion and
throws extravagant parties every Saturday night.
Nick is unlike the other
inhabitants of West Egg—he was educated at Yale and has social connections in
East Egg, a fashionable area of Long Island home to the established upper
class. Nick drives out to East Egg one evening for dinner with his cousin,
Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, an erstwhile classmate of Nick’s at Yale.
Daisy and Tom introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a beautiful, cynical young woman
with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. Nick also learns a bit about
Daisy and Tom’s marriage: Jordan tells him that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson,
who lives in the valley of ashes, a gray industrial dumping ground between West
Egg and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York
City with Tom and Myrtle. At a vulgar, gaudy party in the apartment that Tom
keeps for the affair, Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds
by breaking her nose.
As the summer progresses, Nick
eventually garners an invitation to one of Gatsby’s legendary parties. He
encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself, a
surprisingly young man who affects an English accent, has a remarkable smile,
and calls everyone “old sport.” Gatsby asks to speak to Jordan alone, and,
through Jordan, Nick later learns more about his mysterious neighbor. Gatsby
tells Jordan that he knew Daisy in Louisville in 1917 and is deeply in love
with her. He spends many nights staring at the green light at the end of her
dock, across the bay from his mansion. Gatsby’s extravagant lifestyle and wild
parties are simply an attempt to impress Daisy. Gatsby now wants Nick to
arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy, but he is afraid that Daisy will
refuse to see him if she knows that he still loves her. Nick invites Daisy to
have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there.
After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their
connection. Their love rekindled, they begin an affair.
After a short time, Tom grows
increasingly suspicious of his wife’s relationship with Gatsby. At a luncheon
at the Buchanans’ house, Gatsby stares at Daisy with such undisguised passion
that Tom realizes Gatsby is in love with her. Though Tom is himself involved in
an extramarital affair, he is deeply outraged by the thought that his wife
could be unfaithful to him. He forces the group to drive into New York City,
where he confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom asserts that he
and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand, and he announces
to his wife that Gatsby is a criminal—his fortune comes from bootlegging
alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy realizes that her allegiance is to
Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting
to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt him.
When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive
through the valley of ashes, however, they discover that Gatsby’s car has
struck and killed Myrtle, Tom’s lover. They rush back to Long Island, where
Nick learns from Gatsby that Daisy was driving the car when it struck Myrtle,
but that Gatsby intends to take the blame. The next day, Tom tells Myrtle’s
husband, George, that Gatsby was the driver of the car. George, who has leapt
to the conclusion that the driver of the car that killed Myrtle must have been
her lover, finds Gatsby in the pool at his mansion and shoots him dead. He then
fatally shoots himself.
Nick stages a small funeral for
Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan, and moves back to the Midwest to
escape the disgust he feels for the people surrounding Gatsby’s life and for
the emptiness and moral decay of life among the wealthy on the East Coast. Nick
reflects that just as Gatsby’s dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and
dishonesty, the American dream of happiness and individualism has disintegrated
into the mere pursuit of wealth. Though Gatsby’s power to transform his dreams
into reality is what makes him “great,” Nick reflects that the era of
dreaming—both Gatsby’s dream and the American dream—is over.
CRITICISM:
CRITICISM:
The book
starts off a little slow and I wasn't quite sure what direction it was taking,
but by the end I'm left with such a melancholy feeling I wanted to devour it
again the minute I closed it. Yes, it has it's place as an American classic.In The Great
Gatsby Fitzgerald 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 better 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.Nick’s
attitudes toward Gatsby and Gatsby’s story are ambivalent and contradictory. At
times he seems to disapprove of Gatsby’s excesses and breaches of manners and
ethics, but he also romanticizes and admires Gatsby, describing the events of
the novel in a nostalgic and elegiac tone.Fitzgerald
clearly intends for Gatsby’s dream to be symbolic of the American Dream for
wealth and youth. Gatsby genuinely believes that if a person makes enough money
and amasses a great enough fortune, he can buy anything. He thinks his wealth
can erase the last five years of his and Daisy’s life and reunite them at the
point at which he left her before he went away to the war. In a similar
fashion, all Americans have a tendency to believe that if they have enough
money, they can manipulate time, staying perpetually young, and buy their
happiness through materialistic spending. Throughout the novel, there are many
parties, a hallmark of the rich. But each festivity ends in waste or violence .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.
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.
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