F.

Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 - December 21, 1940), was
well known as F. Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist and short story
writer. Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton
University to join the U.S. Army. His works illustrate the Jazz Age. While he
achieved limited success in his life, he is now widely regarded as one of the
greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a
member of the "Lost Generation" to Americans born in the 1890s, who
matured during the First World War. The group consisted of writers who went
to Europe and gathered in particular in Paris, which at that time became a large
gathering place for writers abroad because of their liberal and openness.
Among them were Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Ezra Pound and
others. The success of his first novel, "This Side of Paradise" (1920), made him
an instant celebrity. His third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), was highly
regarded, but "Tender is the Night" (1934) was considered a disappointment.
Struggling with alcoholism and his wife's mental illness, Fitzgerald attempted to
reinvent himself as a screenwriter. He died before completing his final novel,
The Last Tycoon (1941). This novel was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also
authored 4 collections of short stories, as well as 164 short stories in magazines
during his lifetime.

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald
that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on a
prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns
young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and
obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan. Considered to
be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores the themes of
decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess,
creating a portrait of the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties that has been
described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream .
Fitzgerald-inspired by the parties he attended while visiting Long Island's north
shore-started planning the novel in 1923, desiring to produce, in his words,
"something new-something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and
intricately patterned." Progress was slow, with Fitzgerald completing his first
draft following a move to the French Riviera in 1924. His editor, Maxwell
Perkins, felt the book was vague and persuaded the author to revise over the
next winter. Fitzgerald was repeatedly ambivalent about the book's title and he
considered a variety of alternatives, including titles that referenced the Roman
character Trimalchio; The title he was last documented to have wanted was
Under the Red, White, and Blue.

First published by Scribner's in April 1925, The Great Gatsby received mixed
reviews and sold poorly; In its first year, the book sold only 20,000 copies.
Fitzgerald died in 1940, believing himself to be a failure and his work was
forgotten. However, the novel experienced a revival during World War II, and
became a part of American high school curricula and numerous stage and film
adaptations in the next decades. Today, The Great Gatsby is widely considered
to be a literary classic and a contender for the title "Great American Novel." In
1998, the Modern Library editorial board voted it the 20th century's best
American novel and the second best English-language novel of the same time
period.

Historical context
Set on the prosperous Long Island of 1922, the Great Gatsby provides a critical
social history of America during the Roaring Twenties within its fictional
narrative. This era, known for unprecedented economic prosperity, the
evolution of jazz music flapper culture, new technologies in communication
(motion pictures, broadcast radio, recorded music) forging and genuine mass
culture, and bootlegging, along with other criminal activity, is plausibly
depicted in Fitzgerald's novel. Fitzgerald uses these social developments in the
1920s to build Gatsby's stories from simple details like cars to broader themes
like Fitzgerald's discreet allusions to organized crime, which was the source of
Gatsby's fortune. Fitzgerald depicts the garish society of the Roaring Twenties
by placing the book's plotline in the historical context of the era.
Fitzgerald's visits to Long Island's south shore and his experience of attending
parties at the mansions inspired the Great Gatsby's setting.

Plot Summary

The main events of the novel take place in the summer of 1922. Nick Carraway,
a Yale graduate and veteran of the Great War from the Midwest—who serves
as the novel's narrator—takes a job in New York as a bond salesman. He rents a
small house on Long Island, in the fictional village of West Egg, next door to the
lavish mansion of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire who holds extravagant
parties but does not participate in them. Nick drives around the bay to East Egg
for dinner at the home of his cousin, Daisy Fay Buchanan, and her husband,
Tom, a college acquaintance of Nick's. They introduce Nick to Jordan Baker
with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. She reveals to Nick that Tom
has a mistress, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the "valley of ashes".

As the summer progresses, Nick eventually receives an invitation to one of

Gatsby's parties. Nick encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet
Gatsby himself, a young man who recognizes Nick from their same division in
the Great War. Through Jordan, Nick later learns that Gatsby knew Daisy
through a purely chance meeting in 1917, when Daisy and her friends were
doing volunteer services' work with young Officers headed to Europe. From
their brief meetings and casual encounters at that time, Gatsby became (and
still is) deeply in love with Daisy. Even more, he became obsessed with the idea
of her, and the ideal of living in the world he saw her living in, as the fulfillment
of all the possible dreams he could ever have.

Jordan tells Nick that the only reason Gatsby bought the mansion is because it
was across the bay from Tom and Daisy's home, and that Gatsby's extravagant
lifestyle and wild parties were an attempt to impress Daisy and raise her
curiosity about her "anonymous" neighbor across the bay hoping that Daisy
would come to a party one day. That however never played out.

The whole purpose of the "invitation" to Nick to attend a Gatsby party was to
develop a relationship with him so that Gatsby could later ask Nick to arrange a
reunion between himself and Daisy. 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. They begin an affair
and, after a short time, Tom grows increasingly suspicious of his wife's
relationship with Gatsby. At a lunche at the Buchanans' house, Tom realizes
Daisy is in love with Gatsby. Although Tom is himself having an affair, he is
furious at the thought that his wife could be unfaithful to him. He forces the
group to drive into the city: there, in a suite at the Plaza Hotel, Tom and Gatsby
have a bitter confrontation. Tom denounces Gatsby for his low birth, and
reveals to Daisy that Gatsby's fortune has been made through illegal activities.
Daisy's real allegiance is to Tom: when Gatsby begs her to say that she does not
love her husband, she refuses him. Tom permits Gatsby to drive Daisy back to
East Egg; in this way, he displays his contempt for Gatsby, as well as his faith in
his wife's complete subjection.

On the trip back to East Egg, Gatsby allows Daisy to drive in order to calm her
ragged nerves. Passing Wilson's garage, Daisy swerves to avoid another car and
ends up hitting Myrtle; she is killed instantly. Nick advises Gatsby to leave town
until the situation calms. Gatsby, however, refuses to leave: he remains in
order to ensure that Daisy is safe. George Wilson, driven nearly mad by the
death of his wife, is desperate to find her killer. Tom Buchanan tells him that
Gatsby was the driver of the fatal car. Wilson, who has decided that the driver
of the car must also have been Myrtle's lover, shoots Gatsby before committing
suicide himself. Nick stages an unsettlingly small funeral for Gatsby in which
none of Gatsby's associates or partygoers attend. Later, Nick runs into Tom in
New York and finds out that Tom had told George that Gatsby was Myrtle's
secret lover and that Gatsby had killed her, then gave Gatsby's address to
George. Nick breaks up with Jordan, and, disillusioned with the East, moves
back to the Midwest.

Themes

- The decline of the American Dream in the 1920s

As Fitzgerald saw it , the American dream was originally about discovery,
individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. In the 1920s, however, easy money
and relaxed social values have corrupted this dream, especially on the East
Coast. Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral
values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of
pleasure. All of this had led to the decline of the American dream.

- The Hollowness of the Upper Class

One of the major topics explored in The Great Gatsby is the sociology of
wealth. Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, loud, ostentatious,
and lacking in social graces and taste. Buchanans exemplify this stereotype
when, at the end of the novel, they simply move to a new house far away
rather than attending Gatsby’s funeral.

- Memory and the Past

There's nothing wrong with remembering the good times, but living in the past
just leads you to tragedy. In The Great Gatsby, characters pursue visions of the
future that are determined by their pasts and it ends in tragedy.
- Love
All of the Gatsby's parties were just a way for him to reunite with Daisy.

Morals

- Money can’t buy you love.

- We shouldn't chase after an illusion.
- Unbridled passion isn’t always a good thing.

Main characters

Nick Carraway – a Yale graduate originating from the Midwest, a World War I
veteran, and, at the start of the plot, a newly arrived resident of West Egg, who
is aged 29 (later 30). He also serves as the first-person narrator of the novel. He
is Gatsby's next-door neighbor and a bond salesman. He is easy-going,
occasionally sarcastic, and somewhat optimistic, although this latter quality
fades as the novel progresses. He is a more grounded character than the
others, and more practical, and is always in awe of other character's lifestyles
and morals.

Jay Gatsby (originally James "Jimmy" Gatz) – a young, mysterious millionaire

with shady business connections (later revealed to be a bootlegger), originally
from North Dakota. He is obsessed with Daisy Buchanan, a beautiful debutante
from Louisville, Kentucky whom he had met when he was a young military
officer stationed at the Army's Camp Taylor in Louisville during World War I.
Fitzgerald himself was actually based at Camp Taylor in Louisville when he was
in the Army and makes various references to Louisville in the novel, including
the Seelbach Hotel where the Buchanan party stayed while in town for Tom
and Daisy's wedding. The character is based on the bootlegger and former
World War I officer, Max Gerlach, according to Some Sort of Epic Grandeur,
Matthew J. Bruccoli's biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Gatsby is said to have
briefly studied at Trinity College, Oxford in England after the end of World War
I.

Daisy Fay Buchanan – an attractive and effervescent, if shallow and self-

absorbed, young Louisville, Kentucky debutante and socialite, identified as a
flapper.[13] She is Nick's second cousin, once removed, and the wife of Tom
Buchanan. Daisy is believed to have been inspired by Fitzgerald's own youthful
romances with Ginevra King. Daisy once had a romantic relationship with
Gatsby, before she married Tom. Her choice between Gatsby and Tom is one of
the central conflicts in the novel.

Thomas (or Tom) Buchanan – a millionaire who lives on East Egg, and Daisy's
husband. Tom is an imposing man of muscular build with a "husky tenor" voice
and arrogant demeanor. He is a former football star at Yale. Buchanan has
parallels with 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 and is a
white supremacist.[14]
Jordan Baker – A professional golfer and Daisy Buchanan's long-time friend
with a sarcastic streak and an aloof attitude. She is Nick Carraway's girlfriend
for most of the novel, though they grow apart towards the end. She has a
slightly shady reputation amongst the New York social elite due to her habit of
being evasive and untruthful with her friends and lovers. Fitzgerald told
Maxwell Perkins that Jordan was based on the golfer Edith Cummings, a friend
of Ginevra King.[14] Her name is a play on the two popular automobile brands,
the Jordan Motor Car Company and the Baker Motor Vehicle, alluding to
Jordan's "fast" reputation and the freedom now presented to Americans,
especially women, in the 1920s.[15][16][17]

George B. Wilson – a mechanic and owner of a garage. He is disliked by both his

wife, Myrtle Wilson, and Tom Buchanan, who describes him as "so dumb he
doesn't know he's alive". One interpretation of the novel's ending is that he
learns of the death of his wife, he shoots and kills Gatsby, wrongly believing he
had been driving the car that killed Myrtle, and then kills himself.

Myrtle Wilson – George's wife, and Tom Buchanan's mistress. Myrtle, who
possesses a fierce vitality, is desperate to find refuge from her complacent
marriage, but unfortunately this leads to her tragic ending. She is accidentally
killed by Gatsby's car (driven by Daisy, though Gatsby insists he would take the
blame for the accident).

Meyer Wolfshiem – a Jewish friend and mentor of Gatsby's, described as a

gambler who fixed the World Series. Wolfshiem appears only twice in the
novel, the second time refusing to attend Gatsby's funeral. He 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.[20]

Quotes

„I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father

snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental
decencies is parceled out unequally at birth. „
Here, Nick says that money isn't the only thing that some people are born to.
Some people are naturally just nicer and more honest: they have more "sense
of the fundamental decencies."

„I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a
most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast
between them. [...] Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable
East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins
on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans.
Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I'd known Tom in college. And
just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago. „

Nick sees two kinds of America: the hard-working Chicago, part of a "Middle-
West" culture; and the "white," fashionable East Egg. Nick may be able to make
it in the Middle-West, but he's not cut out for East Coast life.

„In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that
I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that
all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had." „