The Great Gatsby is a famous classic American novel written by Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald in the year 1925. Scott Fitzgerald is an American short-story writer and novelist, whose first career breakthrough was the novel This Side of Paradise made him one of the most promising young writers almost overnight (Biography.com).
The Great Gatsby’s story is told from the point of view of Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner who moves to a little house in West Egg, Long Island, across the river from Daisy and right next to Jay Gatsby’s enormous palace (Fitzgerald, 12). Nick tells the story happened around 1922 following the first World War. He came to the big city to find out about the bond business, but discovered the most exciting story and the lesson of his life.
However, the story’s main character is not Nick Carraway, it is his mysterious neighbor and, possibly, friend – Jay Gatsby – whose personality and history remains a secret for other characters and even readers. Even though he is a public person – no one knows a thing about who he is, except for Nick. People around knows only rumors they heard like the fact that Jay killed a man, studied in Oxford, was a soldier in the 1st World War, he is the devil’s cousin and others.
The reason of Gatsby’s actions and his all life for the past five years is simple – he wants to be reunited with the love of his life, married woman Daisy Buchanan. She cannot even imagine that Gatsby did all the crazy things to attract her attention. All the amazing posh parties with numerous entertainments at his wonderful mansion were arranged only for Daisy to look at Jay. Gatsby kept an enormous house that was extremely well maintained by dozens of servants. “It looked like the World’s fair was here I saw the light miles away.” (Fitzgerald, 87).
Besides the love story, Scott Fitzgerald highlighted some social issues in his novel. Firstly, the reader gets to know how money influences people and puts the consumer’s values above morality. Moreover, the author is pointing out the conflict between different types of wealth, new money versus old money, as well as the hollowness of the upper level of class. In a certain way, Fitzgerald not only critics the higher class of society for being obsessed with money, but also the lower class for forgetting the true American Dream values. Instead of pursuing the idea of being happy, most of the characters are more interested in money and authority (Lehan 10).
While reading the book you will definitely notice the beautiful way the Great Gatsby’s world is illustrated. Using the best possible lyricism author creates the pitch-perfect impression that the Jazz Age happens in the readers’ mind.
The Great Gatsby is a great book to learn from. It shows the power of love, wealth, power, options in our lives and how our decisions influence us and the world around. The result of Gatsby’s decision was his death. The most tragic part of the novel is the fact that Daisy did not show up to his funeral (Fitzgerald, 167). Moreover, is spite of the numerous guests at his parties, there were few mourners at Gatsby’s funeral. It turns out that, except for friends and few more people, no one is interested at Jay Gatsby when there are no benefits from being around him. However, maybe it was Gatsby’s fault, as he kept only few friends in his life. He thought his reputation and authority would be more perfected if no one around really knew him.
Works Cited:
Biography.com. (2016). F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography. [online] Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/f-scott-fitzgerald-9296261 [Accessed 23 Jul. 2016].
Lehan, Richard D. The Great Gatsby: The Limits of Wonder. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2013. Print.