The Great Gatsby () is a 1925 tragedy novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with Jay Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire obsessed with reuniting with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan.
The novel was inspired by a youthful romance Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra King and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island's North Shore in 1922. Following a move to the French Riviera, Fitzgerald completed a rough draft of the novel in 1924. He submitted it to editor Maxwell Perkins, who persuaded Fitzgerald to revise the work over the following winter. After making revisions, Fitzgerald was satisfied with the text but remained ambivalent about the book's title and considered several alternatives. Painter Francis Cugat's dust jacket art, named Celestial Eyes, greatly impressed Fitzgerald, and he incorporated its imagery into the novel.
After its publication by Scribner's in April 1925, The Great Gatsby received generally favorable reviews, though some literary critics believed it did not equal Fitzgerald's previous efforts. Compared to his earlier novels, This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and Damned (1922), the novel was a commercial disappointment. It sold fewer than 20,000 copies by October, and Fitzgerald's hopes of a monetary windfall from the novel were unrealized. When Fitzgerald died in 1940, he believed himself to be a failure and his work forgotten.
During World War II, the novel experienced an abrupt surge in popularity when the Council on Books in Wartime distributed free copies to American soldiers serving overseas. This new-found popularity launched a critical and scholarly re-examination, and the work soon became a core part of most American high school curricula and a part of American popular culture. Numerous stage and film adaptations followed in the subsequent decades.
Gatsby continues to attract popular and scholarly attention. Scholars emphasize the novel's treatment of social class, inherited versus self-made wealth, gender, race, and environmentalism, as well as its cynical attitude towards the American Dream. The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be a literary masterpiece and a contender for the title of the Great American Novel.
Historical and biographical context
Set on the prosperous Long Island of 1922, The Great Gatsby provides a critical social history of Prohibition-era America during the Jazz Age. F. Scott Fitzgerald's fictional narrative fully renders that period—known for its jazz music,. economic prosperity, flapper culture,: "Scarcely had the staider citizens of the republic caught their breaths when the wildest of all generations, the generation which had been adolescent during the confusion of the [Great] War, brusquely shouldered my contemporaries out of the way and danced into the limelight. This was the generation whose girls dramatized themselves as flappers." libertine mores,. rebellious youth,. and ubiquitous speakeasies. Fitzgerald uses many of these 1920s societal developments to tell his story, from simple details like petting in automobiles to broader themes such as bootlegging as the illicit source of Gatsby's fortune.: "Unchaperoned young people of the smaller cities had discovered the mobile privacy of that automobile given to young Bill at sixteen to make him 'self-reliant'. At first petting was a desperate adventure even under such favorable conditions, but presently confidences were exchanged and the old commandment broke down".
Fitzgerald conveys the hedonism of Jazz Age society by following a down-to-earth narrator as a spectator of the flashiest and most raucous era in American history.; ; . In Fitzgerald's eyes, the era represented a morally permissive time when Americans of all ages became disillusioned with prevailing social norms and obsessed with pleasure-seeking.. Fitzgerald himself had a certain ambivalence towards the Jazz Age, an era whose themes he would later regard as reflective of events in his own life.: Fitzgerald documented the Jazz Age and his life's relation to the era in his essay, "Echoes of the Jazz Age" which was published in the essay collection The Crack-Up.
The Great Gatsby reflects various events in Fitzgerald's youth. He was a young Midwesterner from Minnesota. He was educated at Princeton, an Ivy League school, like the novel's narrator, who went to Yale. In 1915, the 18-year-old Fitzgerald met Ginevra King, a 16-year-old socialite with whom he fell deeply in love.: Fitzgerald later confided to his daughter, Scottie, that Ginevra King "was the first girl I ever loved" and that he "faithfully avoided seeing her" to "keep the illusion perfect". Although Ginevra was madly in love with him, her upper-class family openly discouraged his courtship of their daughter because of his lower-class status, and her father purportedly told him that "poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls".: "That August Fitzgerald visited Ginevra in Lake Forest, Illinois. Afterward he wrote in his ledger foreboding words, spoken to him perhaps by Ginevra's father, 'Poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls.
Rejected by Ginevra's family as a suitor because of his lack of financial prospects, a suicidal Fitzgerald enlisted in the United States Army amid World War I and was commissioned as a second lieutenant.. Fitzgerald wished to be killed in battle, and he hoped that his novel would become a great success in the wake of his death. While awaiting deployment to the Western front where he hoped to die in combat, he was stationed at Camp Sheridan in Montgomery, Alabama, where he met Zelda Sayre, a vivacious 17-year-old Southern belle. After learning that Ginevra had married wealthy Chicago businessman William "Bill" Mitchell, Fitzgerald asked Zelda to marry him.; Zelda agreed, but postponed their marriage until he became financially successful.: "Zelda would question whether he was ever going to make enough money for them to marry", and Fitzgerald was compelled to prove that "he was rich enough for her". Fitzgerald is thus similar to Jay Gatsby in that he became engaged while a military officer stationed far from home and then sought immense wealth in order to provide for the lifestyle to which his fiancée had become accustomed.: "Fame and fortune did not seem to be materializing on schedule for Fitzgerald, and Zelda was fretting her time away in Montgomery wondering if she ought not to marry one of her more eligible and financially better equipped admirers".
After his success as a short-story writer and as a novelist, Fitzgerald married Zelda in New York City, and the newly-wed couple soon relocated to Long Island. Despite enjoying the exclusive Long Island milieu, Fitzgerald quietly disapproved of the extravagant parties, and the wealthy persons he encountered often disappointed him. While striving to emulate the rich, he found their privileged lifestyle to be morally disquieting.: Although Fitzgerald strove "to become member of the community of the rich, to live from day to day as they did, to share their interests and tastes", he found such a privileged lifestyle to be morally disquieting. Although Fitzgerald—like Gatsby—had always admired the rich, he nonetheless possessed a smoldering resentment towards them.: Fitzgerald "admired deeply the rich" and yet his wealthy friends often disappointed or repulsed him. Consequently, he harbored "the smouldering hatred of a peasant" towards the wealthy and their milieu.
Plot summary
In spring 1922, Nick Carraway—a Yale alumnus from the Midwest and a World War I veteran—journeys to New York City to obtain employment as a bond salesman. He rents a bungalow in the Long Island village of West Egg, next to a luxurious estate inhabited by Jay Gatsby, an enigmatic multi-millionaire who hosts dazzling soirées, yet does not partake in them.
One evening, Nick dines with a distant cousin, Daisy Buchanan, in the old money town of East Egg. Daisy is married to Tom Buchanan, formerly a Yale football star whom Nick knew during his college days. The couple has recently relocated from Chicago to a mansion directly across the bay from Gatsby's estate. There, Nick encounters Jordan Baker, an insolent flapper and golf champion who is a childhood friend of Daisy's. Jordan confides to Nick that Tom keeps a mistress, who brazenly telephones him at his home and lives in the "valley of ashes", a sprawling refuse dump.: The valley of ashes was a landfill in Flushing Meadows, Queens. "In those empty spaces and graying heaps, part of which was known as the Corona Dumps, Fitzgerald found his perfect image for the callous and brutal betrayal of the incurably innocent Gatsby". Flushing Meadows was drained and became the location of the 1939 World's Fair. That evening, Nick sees Gatsby standing alone on his lawn, staring at a green light across the bay.
Days later, Nick reluctantly accompanies a drunken and agitated Tom to New York City by train. En route, they stop at a garage inhabited by mechanic George Wilson and his wife—and Tom's mistress—Myrtle. Myrtle joins them, and the trio proceeds to a small New York apartment that Tom has rented for trysts with her. Guests arrive and a party ensues, which ends with Tom slapping Myrtle and breaking her nose after she mentions Daisy.
One morning, Nick receives a formal invitation to a party at Gatsby's mansion. Once there, Nick is embarrassed that he recognizes no one and begins drinking heavily until he encounters Jordan. While chatting with her, he is approached by a man who introduces himself as Jay Gatsby and insists that both he and Nick served in the 3rd Infantry Division during the war. Gatsby attempts to ingratiate himself with Nick and when Nick leaves the party, he notices Gatsby watching him.
In late July, Nick and Gatsby have lunch at a speakeasy. Gatsby tries impressing Nick with tales of his war heroism and his Oxford days. Afterward, Nick meets Jordan again at the Plaza Hotel. Jordan reveals that Gatsby and Daisy met around 1917 when Gatsby was an officer in the American Expeditionary Forces. They fell in love, but when Gatsby was deployed overseas, Daisy reluctantly married Tom. Gatsby hopes that his newfound wealth and dazzling parties will make Daisy reconsider. Gatsby uses Nick to stage a reunion with Daisy, and the two embark upon an affair.
In September, Tom discovers the affair when Daisy carelessly addresses Gatsby with unabashed intimacy in front of him. Later, at a Plaza Hotel suite, Gatsby and Tom argue about the affair. Gatsby insists Daisy declare that she never loved Tom. Daisy claims she loves Tom and Gatsby, upsetting both. Tom reveals Gatsby is a swindler whose money comes from bootlegging alcohol. Upon hearing this, Daisy chooses to stay with Tom. Tom scornfully tells Gatsby to drive her home, knowing that Daisy will never leave him.
While returning to East Egg, Gatsby and Daisy drive by Wilson's garage and their car strikes Myrtle, killing her instantly. Later Gatsby reveals to Nick that Daisy was driving the car, but that he intends to take the blame for the accident to protect her. Nick urges Gatsby to flee to avoid prosecution, but he refuses. After Tom tells George that Gatsby owns the car that struck Myrtle, a distraught George assumes the owner of the vehicle must be Myrtle's lover. George fatally shoots Gatsby in his mansion's swimming pool, then kills himself.