the great gatsby original book review

Read TIME’s Original Review of <i>The Great Gatsby</i>

Read TIME’s Original Review of The Great Gatsby

T he main book review in the May 11, 1925, issue of TIME earned several columns of text, with an in-depth analysis of the book’s significance and the author’s background.

But, nearly a century later, you’ve probably never heard of Mr. Tasker’s Gods , by T.F. Powys, much less read it.

Meanwhile, another book reviewed in the issue, earning a single paragraph relegated to the second page of the section, has gone down in history as one of the most important works in American literature — and, to many, the great American novel. It was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby , published exactly 90 years ago, on April 10, 1925.

TIME’s original review, though noting Fitzgerald’s talent, gave little hint of the fame waiting for the book:

THE GREAT GATSBY—F. Scott Fitzgerald—Scribner—($2.00). Still the brightest boy in the class, Scott Fitzgerald holds up his hand. It is noticed that his literary trousers are longer, less bell-bottomed, but still precious. His recitation concerns Daisy Fay who, drunk as a monkey the night before she married Tom Buchanan, muttered: “Tell ’em all Daisy’s chang’ her mind.” A certain penniless Navy lieutenant was believed to be swimming out of her emotional past. They gave her a cold bath, she married Buchanan, settled expensively at West Egg, L. I., where soon appeared one lonely, sinister Gatsby, with mounds of mysterious gold, ginny habits and a marked influence on Daisy. He was the lieutenant, of course, still swimming. That he never landed was due to Daisy’s baffled withdrawal to the fleshly, marital mainland. Due also to Buchanan’s disclosure that the mounds of gold were ill-got. Nonetheless, Yegg Gatsby remained Daisy’s incorruptible dream, unpleasantly removed in person toward the close of the book by an accessory in oil-smeared dungarees.

But not everyone had trouble seeing the future: in a 1933 cover story about Gertrude Stein, the intellectual icon offered her prognostications on the literature of her time. F. Scott Fitzgerald, she told TIME, “will be read when many of his well known contemporaries are forgotten.”

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The Great Gatsby

By f. scott fitzgerald.

'The Great Gatsby' tells a very human story of wealth, dreams, and failure. F. Scott Fitzgerald takes the reader into the heart of the Jazz Age, in New York City, and into the world of Jay Gatsby.

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

The Great Gatsby tells a very human story of wealth, dreams, and failure. F. Scott Fitzgerald takes the reader into the heart of the Jazz Age , in New York City, and into the world of Jay Gatsby. Through Nick’s narration, readers are exposed to the dangers of caring too much about the wrong thing and devoting themselves to the wrong ideal.

Gatsby’s pursuit of the past central to my understanding of this novel. Fitzgerald created Gatsby as a representative of the American dream , someone who, despite all of his hard work, did not achieve the one thing he wanted most in life.

Wealth and the American Dream

Another part of this novel I found to be integral to my understanding of the time period was the way that wealth and the American dream did not exist alongside one another. The American dream suggests that through hard work and determination, anyone can achieve the dream life they’re looking for.

On the outside, Gatsby does just that. He raises himself out of poverty and makes his fortune (albeit not through entirely legal means). He worked hard and remained focused. For those attending his parties or who have seen his mansion, he is living the best possible life–an embodiment of the American dream. But, he’s missing the one thing he really wanted to achieve–Daisy’s love and commitment. His pursuit of wealth was not for wealth alone. It was for something that, he realized, money can’t buy.

It was impossible for me not to feel moved by the bind Gatsby got himself into. He put Daisy on a pedestal, one that required she fulfill her end of the bargain if he fulfilled his. He got rich and acquired the means to give her the kind of life she wanted. But, Daisy was unwilling to separate herself from her husband, Tom Buchanan, and return to Gatsby. She ended up being more interested in maintaining her social status and staying in the safety of her marriage than living what might’ve been a happy life.

Daisy Buchanan and the Treatment of Women

Her character is often deeply romanticized, with her actions painted as those of a woman torn between what she knows is right and her inability to guide her own life. However, I always return to the strange conversation she shares with Nick, revealing her concerns about raising a daughter. The quote from The Great Gatsby reads:

I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.

This quote proved to me that Daisy is well aware of her position in the world, and she turns to the safety of being “a beautiful little fool” when she needs to be. It’s the only way she feels she can survive.

There’s something to be said for the depiction of Daisy as a victim. Still, her callous treatment of Gatsby at the end of the novel, seen through her refusal to attend his funeral and dismissal of the destruction she caused, is hard to empathize with. Daisy may be at Tom’s mercy for a great deal, her livelihood, and her social status, but when she walks away from the death of a man she supposedly loved, it feels as though her true nature is revealed. She’s a survivor more than anything else and didn’t deserve the pedestal that Gatsby put her on. This is part of what makes Gatsby’s story so tragic. He was pure in a way that no other character in the novel was. He had one thing he wanted, and he was determined to do anything to get it. That one thing, Daisy’s love, was what let him down.

I also found it interesting to consider the differences between Jordan’s character and Daisy’s and how they were both treated. Jordan, while certainly no saint, is regarded as a dangerous personality. She sleeps with different men, appears to hold no one’s opinion above her own, and has made an independent career for herself as a golfer (a surely male-dominated world). I continue to ask myself how much of Nick’s depiction of Jordan is based on her pushing the envelope of what a woman “should” do in the 1920s ?

The Great Gatsby and Greatness

One of the novel’s defining moments is when Nick realizes who was truly “great” and why. Gatsby wasn’t “Great” because of his wealth, home, parties, or any other physical item he owned. He was great because of the single-minded pursuit of his dream. His incredible personality and determination made him a one-of-a-kind man in Nick’s world. This realization about who Gatsby was and what he represented was driven home by his death and the lack of attendees at his funeral. No one, aside from Nick, realizes the kind of man he was. Those he might’ve called friends were using him for the money, possession, or social status they might have attained. But, Nick realizes that none of these things made the man “great.”

The Great Gatsby as a Historical Document

Finally, I find myself considering what the novel can tell us about the United States post-World War I and during the financial boom of the roaring twenties. Without didactically detailing historical information, the novel does provide readers with an interesting insight into what the world was like then.

The characters, particularly those who attend Gatsby’s parties, appear to have nothing to lose. They’ve made it through the war, are financially better off than they were before, and are more than willing to throw caution to the wind. Fitzgerald taps into a particular culture, fueled by a new love for jazz music, financial stability, prohibition and speakeasies, and new freedoms for women. The novel evokes this culture throughout each page, transporting readers into a very different time and place.

The novel conveys a feeling of change to me, a realization that the American dream may not be all it’s cut out to be and that the world was never going to be the same again after World War I. It appears that this is part of what was fueling Fitzgerald’s characters in The Great Gatsby and his plot choices.

What did early reviewers think of The Great Gatsby ?

Early reviews of The Great Gatsby were not positive. Reviewers generally dismissed the novel, suggesting that it was not as good as Fitzgerald’s prior novels. It was not until after this death that it was elevated to the status it holds today.

What is the message of The Great Gatsby ?

The message is that the American dream is not real and that wealth does not equal happiness. Plus, optimism might feel and seem noble but when it’s misplaced it can be destructive.

Is Jay Gatsby a good or bad character?

Gatsby is generally considered to be a good character. He did illegal things to gain his fortune but it was with the best intentions–regaining the love of Daisy, the woman he loved in his youth.

Did Daisy actually love Gatsy?

It’s unclear whether or not she loved Gatsby. But, considering her actions, it seems unlikely she loved him during the novel.

What does Nick learn from Gatsby?

Nick learns that the wealth of East and West Egg are a cover for emptiness and moral bankruptcy. The men and women he met are devoid of empathy or love for one another.

The Great Gatsby: Fitzgerald's Enduring Classic of the Jazz Age

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Digital Art

Book Title: The Great Gatsby

Book Description: 'The Great Gatsby' is an unforgettable and beautiful novel that explores the nature of dreams and their value in contemporary society.

Book Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Book Edition: First Limited Edition

Book Format: Hardcover

Publisher - Organization: Charles Scribner's Sons

Date published: April 10, 1925

ISBN: 0-14-006229-2

Number Of Pages: 224

Writing Style
Lasting Effect on Reader

The Great Gatsby Review

The Great Gatsby is a novel of the Jazz Age. It follows Nick Carraway as he uncovers the truth behind his mysterious neighbor’s wealth and dreams. The novel explores the consequences of wealth and suggests that the American dream is an unrealistic expectation.

Realistic setting.
Interesting and provoking dialogue.
Memorable characters.
Limited action and emotions.
Several unlikeable characters.
Leaves readers with questions.

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About Emma Baldwin

Emma Baldwin, a graduate of East Carolina University, has a deep-rooted passion for literature. She serves as a key contributor to the Book Analysis team with years of experience.

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Books | time machine: h.l. mencken’s 1925 review of ‘the great gatsby’.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" was reviewed in the Chicago Sunday Tribune by H.L. Mencken in 1925.

Scott Fitzgerald’s new novel, “The Great Gatsby” is in form no more than a glorified anecdote, and not too probable at that. The scene is the Long Island that hangs precariously on the edges of the New York City trash dumps — the Long Island of the gandy villas and bawdy house parties. The theme is the old one of a romantic and preposterous love — the ancient fidelis ad urnum motif reduced to a macabre humor. The principal personage is a bounder typical of those parts — a fellow who seems to know every one and yet remains unknown to all — a young man with a great deal of mysterious money, the tastes of a movie actor and, under it all, the simple sentimentality of a somewhat sclerotic fat woman.

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This clown Fitzgerald rushes to his death in nine short chapters. The other performers in the Totentons are of a like, or even worse, quality. One of them is a rich man who carries on a grotesque intrigue with the wife of a garage keeper. Another is a woman golfer who wins championships by cheating. A third, a sort of chorus to the tragic farce, is a bond salesman — symbol of the New America! Fitzgerald clears them all off at last by a triple butchery. The garage-keeper’s wife, rushing out upon the road to escape her husband’s third degree is run down and killed by the wife of her lover. The garage keeper, misled by the lover, kills the lover of the lover’s wife — the Great Gatsby himself. Another bullet, and the garage keeper is also reduced to offal. Choragus fades away. The crooked lady golfer departs. The lover of the garage keeper’s wife goes back to his own consort. The immense house of the Great Gatsby stands idle, its bedrooms given over to the bat and the owl, its cocktail shakers dry. The curtain lurches down.

Profiting by Criticism

This story is obviously unimportant and, though, as I shall show, it has its place in the Fitzgerald canon, it is certainly not to be put on the same shelf with, say, “This Side of Paradise.” What ails it, fundamentally, is the plain fact that it is simply a story — that Fitzgerald seems to be far more interested in maintaining its suspense than in getting under the skins of its people. It is not that they are false: it is that they are taken too much for granted. Only Gatsby himself genuinely lives and breathes. The rest are mere marionettes — often astonishingly lifelike, but nevertheless not quite alive.

What gives the story distinction is something quite different from the management of the action or the handling of the characters; it is the charm and beauty of the writing. In Fitzgerald’s first days it seemed almost unimaginable that he would ever show such qualities. His writing then was extraordinarily slipshod — at times almost illiterate. He seemed to be devoid of any feeling for the color and savor of words. He could see people clearly and he could devise capital situations, but as writer qua writer he was apparently little more than a bright college boy. The critics of the Republic were not slow to discern the fact. They praised “This Side of Paradise” as a story, as a social document, but they were almost unanimous in denouncing it as a piece of writing.

It is vastly to Fitzgerald’s credit that he appears to have taken their caveats seriously, and pondered them to good effect. In “The Great Gatsby,” highly agreeable fruits of that pondering are visible. The story, for all its basic triviality, has a fine texture, a careful and brilliant finish. The obvious phrase is simply not in it. The sentences roll along smoothly, sparklingly, variously. There is evidence in every line of hard and intelligent effort. It is a quite new Fitzgerald who emerges from this little book, and the qualities that he shows are dignified and solid. “This Side of Paradise,” after all, might have been merely a lucky accident. But “The Great Gatsby,” a far inferior story at bottom, is plainly the product of a sound and stable talent, conjured into being by hard work.

Reversing the Order

I make much of this improvement because it is of an order not witnessed in American writers; and seldom, indeed, in those who start off with popular success. The usual progression indeed, is in the opposite direction. Every year first books of great promise are published — and every year a great deal of stale drivel is printed by the promising authors of year before last. The rewards of literary success in this country are so vast that, when they come early, they are not unnaturally somewhat demoralizing. The average author yields to them readily. Having struck the bull’s-eye once, he is too proud to learn new tricks. Above all, he is too proud to tackle hard work. The result is a gradual degeneration of whatever talent he had at the beginning. He begins to imitate himself. He peters out.

There is certainly no sign of petering out in Fitzgerald. After his first experimenting he plainly sat himself down calmly to consider his deficiencies. They were many and serious. He was, first of all, too facile. He could write entertainingly without giving thought to form and organization. He was, secondly, somewhat amateurish. The materials and methods of his craft, I venture, rather puzzled him. He used them ineptly. His books showed brilliancy in conception, but they were crude and even ignorant in detail. They suggested, only too often, the improvisations of a pianist playing furiously by ear, but unable to read notes.

These are the defects that he has now got rid of. “The Great Gatsby,” I seem to recall, was announced a long while ago. It was probably several years on the stocks. It shows, on every page, the results of that laborious effort. Writing it, I take it, was painful. The author wrote, tore up, rewrote, tore up again. There are pages so artfully contrived that one can no more imagine improvising them than one can imagine improvising a fugue. They are full of little delicacies; charming turns of phrase, penetrating second thoughts. In other words, they are easy and excellent reading — which is what always comes out of hard writing.

Pen of Accuracy

Thus Fitzgerald, the stylist, arises to challenge Fitzgerald, the social historian, but I doubt that the latter ever quite succumbs to the former. The thing that chiefly interests the basic Fitzgerald is still the florid show of modern American life — and especially the devil’s dance that goes on at the top. He is unconcerned about the sweatings and sufferings of the nether herd; what engrosses him is the high carnival of those who have too much money to spend, and too much time for the spending of it. Their idiotic pursuit of sensation, their almost incredible stupidity and triviality, their glittering swinishness — these are the things that go into his notebook.

In “The Great Gatsby,” though he does not go below the surface, he depicts this rattle and hullabaloo with great gusto and, I believe, with sharp accuracy. The Long Island he sets before us is no fanciful Alsatia; it actually exists. More, it is worth any social historians study, for its influence upon the rest of the country is immense and profound. What is vogue among the profiteers of Manhattan and their harlots today is imitated by the flappers of the Bible Belt country clubs weeks after next. The whole tone of American society, once so highly formalized and so suspicious of change, is now taken largely from frail ladies who were slinging hash a year ago.

Fitzgerald showed the end products of the new dispensation in “This Side of Paradise.” In “The Beautiful and the Damned,” he cut a bit lower. In “The Great Gatsby” he comes near the bottom. Social leader and jailbird, grand lady and kept woman, are here almost indistinguishable. We are in an atmosphere grown increasingly levantine. The Paris of the Second Empire pales to a sort of snobbish chautauqua; the New York of Ward McAllister becomes the scene of a convention of Gold Star Mothers. To find a parallel for the grossness and debauchery that now reign in New York one must go back to the Constantinople of Basil I.

This story originally appeared in the Chicago Sunday Tribune on May 3, 1925.

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To Its Earliest Reviewers, Gatsby Was Anything but Great

The canonical novel, published 90 years ago today, was initially deemed "unimportant," "painfully forced," " no more than a glorified anecdote," and "a dud."

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This story is obviously unimportant and, though, as I shall show, it has its place in the Fitzgerald canon, it is certainly not to be put on the same shelf with, say, This Side of Paradise . What ails it, fundamentally, is the plain fact that it is simply a story—that Fitzgerald seems to be far more interested in maintaining its suspense than in getting under the skins of its people.

When This Side of Paradise was published, Mr. Fitzgerald was hailed as a young man of promise, which he certainly appeared to be. But the promise, like so many, seems likely to go unfulfilled. The Roman candle which sent out a few gloriously colored balls at the first lighting seems to be ending in a fizzle of smoke and sparks.

Altogether it seems to us this book is a minor performance. At the moment, its author seems a bit bored and tired and cynical. There is no ebullience here, nor is there any mellowness or profundity. For our part, The Great Gatsby might just as well be called Ten Nights on Long Island .

Book reviews are, at their best, nuanced and complicated things. One corollary to that is that even a bad review can be made, in other contexts, to look like a more positive one by way of selective quotation. The initial ad for Gatsby that ran in many publications of the time—including this one—featured snippets from critics praising Fitzgerald's latest effort. Among them was this: "The sentences roll along smoothly, sparklingly, variously ... It is quite a new Fitzgerald who emerges from this book and the qualities that she shows are dignified and solid."

The ad attributes the praise to H.L. Mencken: the same critic who had dismissed Gatsby , overall , as not just inferior to Fitzgerald's other works, but also as an "obviously unimportant" story in whose telling the author "does not go below the surface." Gatsby himself, Mencken wrote, "genuinely lives and breathes"; he is also, however, a "clown." And his supporting cast of characters, the critic concluded, "are mere marionettes — often astonishingly lifelike, but nevertheless not quite alive."

About the Author

A Satire On The American Dream: Reviewing F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ is a 1925 American novel finding its setting in the roaring twenties of America- the Jazz Age. It is a remarkable attempt by Fitzgerald to mock the idealistic idea of the American Dream .

The book is renowned for being one of its kind, a classic that resonates with its readers to date. It has also been adapted into movies four times in the history of cinema, is included in the academic curriculum of ‘American Literature’, and is well recognized globally. Thin and engaging enough to finish in a few reads. The themes and narrative style of the book are what make it a worthwhile read.

Let us explore these dimensions one by one.

And please make sure you know that there are mild spoilers ahead…

So, What Is So Great About ‘The Great Gatsby’?

The narrative.

The narrative style is characterized by a first-person perspective, that is, by Nick Carraway. He is not only an observer but also a participant in the story. Nick, on his journey to establish himself in the ‘bond business’, closely encounters the life events of Jay Gatsby. The titular character, Jay Gatsby is a wealthy and mysterious man who throws grand parties and is secretly seeking love back from his old mistress, Daisy Buchanan.

Daisy, also a close cousin of Nick, is married to Tom Buchanan, a rich aristocrat positing his esteemed rank in society. The love triangle, especially viewed by Nick from Gatsby’s perspective, is a thrilling read, given the kind of complicated events it involves as the story progresses.

The novel consists of nine chapters. Each chapter delves into different aspects of the character’s lives, the social environment of the 1920s, and the unfolding drama surrounding Jay Gatsby’s pursuit of the American Dream and his love for Daisy Buchanan. The concise structure helps maintain a focused narrative.

Fitzgerald employs lyrical and poetic prose that captures the opulence and moral decay of the Jazz Age, blending vivid descriptions with a reflective, almost melancholic tone. For instance, the grand parties thrown by Gatsby might symbolize wealth and lavishness but have a hidden sense of void and meaninglessness underneath.

The characters are plentiful. Their interplay provides readers with a platform to understand the complex relationships between humans, coupled with differences in inherited class and wealth.

The novel’s narrative includes comic gestures to provide subtle social critiques and highlight the absurdities of the characters’ behaviors and the era’s decadence. This is exemplified in various instances, such as Tom Buchanan’s arrogant posturing and superficial bravado hint at irony, underscoring his ignorance and moral blindness.

The narrative is also marked by a sense of nostalgia and introspection, as Nick recounts events with a combination of admiration and critical distance, providing a deep and nuanced exploration of themes like the American Dream, social stratification, and unrequited love. This style invites readers to question the underlying realities of the characters’ lives and the era’s moral landscape.

The novel’s thematic richness has won ample recognition. Some of the most major themes are the failure of the American Dream, the inverse proportion between humanity and class, the deceiving glamor of the Jazz Age, failure in love, and illusions surrounding hope. These themes altogether come to describe America in a way that underscores its moral ambiguities and societal contradictions, painting a portrait of a nation grappling with its ideals versus its realities.

Lionel Trilling , in his 1950 essay, praised the novel for its exploration of “a tragic pastoral America” where the character of Gatsby who is “divided between power and dream, comes inevitably to stand for America itself”.

Marius Bewley, in his 1954 essay , commented, “The Great Gatsby embodies a criticism of American experience” which is “not of manners, but of a basic historic attitude to life”.

T.S. Eliot wrote a letter to Fitzgerald praising the book and saying that according to him, it was “the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James ”.

The Symbolism

“The Great Gatsby” often refers to the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. The first chapter of the novel closes with this image. It is quite picturesque and so is the message it gives. It serves as a ray of hope for Gatsby telling that one day he would eventually be able to have Daisy’s love. This symbolism reappears constantly throughout the novel. However, the result is nothing but void because Gatsby’s pursuit ends up unfulfilled.

Additionally, the places where the characters live include the West Egg (newly turned rich people like Nick and Gatsby), East Egg (the aristocrats like Tom, Daisy, and Jordan), and the Valley of the Ashes (people not that well-off like George and Myrtle). This very well symbolizes differences in class, wealth, lifestyle, power, and consequences.

The Tragedy

“The Great Gatsby” can be considered a modern-day tragedy wherein Gatsby embodies the traits of a tragic hero. He rises from humble beginnings to immense wealth, driven by his obsession for Daisy’s love and his desire to recapture an idealized past. Despite his success, Gatsby’s inner flaws, particularly his unwavering idealism and naivety, lead to his tragic downfall.

The story also critiques the moral decay beneath the surface of the glittering Jazz Age. Characters like Tom and Daisy Buchanan epitomize the carelessness and moral irresponsibility of the elite, contributing to the tragic events. Gatsby’s tragedy is not just personal but also a commentary on the broader social and moral failings of the era.

Gatsby’s pursuit isolates him from those around him. His lavish parties are filled with people who use him but do not genuinely care for him. But eventually, his end of the story is met with indifference by the very society he sought to impress, highlighting his profound loneliness and the emptiness of his achievements. For readers, this evokes catharsis , eliciting a reflection on the deeper truths about ambition, love, and the human condition in the modern world.

Gatsby has been called ‘great’ for some considerable reasons. Firstly, Gatsby dared to go out of his way and earn wealth believing in the trueness of the American Dream. The transition makes him change his identity from Gatz to Gatsby, even though the ways he opts to do so aren’t fully just.

Secondly and more importantly, Gatsby’s love for Daisy is what makes him great. Even though Daisy, morally decayed as reflected in her actions, did not earn this much love and consideration, Gatsby went on to praise her beyond what she was worthy of. His love for her made her appear beautiful. However, it was his greatness that led him to earn endless recognition as an amazing lover. Probably why Nick calls him “The Great Gatsby”.

Jennis Jacob, a passionate literary enthusiast in her 20s, is a writer and poet. With eight years of experience in literature, she is currently a master in English and finds inspiration in Womanist, American, and Indian Partition Literatures. Her works have appeared in anthologies such as ‘Carved Words Of Creative Minds’ and ‘100 Splendid Voices,’ and she is working on upcoming books. Through LitWithASip, she aims to ignite a love for literature and empower individuals to embrace their true selves.

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Life in West Egg and East Egg

Resurfacing gatsby’s past, a deadly crash and a shooting, setting and historical context, publication history, legacy, and adaptations, the meaning of the great gatsby.

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Table Of Contents

The Great Gatsby , novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald , published in 1925 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Set in Jazz Age New York , it tells the story of Jay Gatsby , a self-made millionaire, and his pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, a wealthy young woman whom he loved in his youth .

Commercially unsuccessful when it was first published, The Great Gatsby —which was Fitzgerald’s third novel—is now considered a classic of American fiction and has often been called the Great American Novel.

Who is Jay Gatsby, and what are the parties like at his house?
How does Tom Buchanan react to the relationship that his wife, Daisy, has with Gatsby?
What shocking event occurs when Daisy, seated beside Gatsby, is driving his car, and how does it affect everyone involved?
How does The Great Gatsby capture the essence of the Jazz Age?
How did The Great Gatsby ’s popularity change over time?
What is the significance of West Egg vs. East Egg, and which wins in the end?

These AI-generated questions have been reviewed by Britannica’s editors.

Plot summary

The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway , a Yale University graduate from the Midwest who moves to New York after World War I to pursue a career in bonds . He recounts the events of the summer he spent in the East two years later, reconstructing his story through a series of flashbacks not always told in chronological order.

Young woman with glasses reading a book, student

In the spring of 1922, Nick takes a house in the fictional village of West Egg on Long Island , where he finds himself living among the colossal mansions of the newly rich. Across the water in the more refined village of East Egg live his cousin Daisy and her brutish, absurdly wealthy husband Tom Buchanan. Early in the summer Nick goes over to their house for dinner, where he also meets Jordan Baker, a friend of Daisy’s and a well-known golf champion, who tells him that Tom has a mistress in New York City . In a private conversation, Daisy confesses to Nick that she has been unhappy. Returning to his house in West Egg, he catches sight of his neighbor Jay Gatsby standing alone in the dark and stretching his arms out to a green light burning across the bay at the end of Tom and Daisy’s dock.

Early in July Tom introduces Nick to his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, who lives with her spiritless husband George Wilson in what Nick calls “a valley of ashes”: an industrial wasteland presided over by the bespectacled eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, which stare down from an advertising billboard. Meeting her at the garage where George works as a repairman, the three of them go to Tom and Myrtle’s apartment in Manhattan. They are joined by Myrtle’s sister and some other friends who live nearby, and the evening ends in heavy drunkenness and Tom punching Myrtle in the nose when she brings up Daisy. Nick wakes up in a train station the morning afterward.

As the summer progresses, Nick grows accustomed to the noises and lights of dazzling parties held at his neighbor’s house, where the famous and newly rich turn up on Saturday nights to enjoy Gatsby’s well-stocked bar and full jazz orchestra. Nick attends one of these parties when personally invited by Gatsby and runs into Jordan, with whom he spends most of the evening. He is struck by the apparent absence of the host and the impression that all of his guests seem to have dark theories about Gatsby’s past. However, Nick meets him at last in a rather quiet encounter later in the evening when the man sitting beside him identifies himself as Gatsby. Gatsby disappears and later asks to speak to Jordan privately. Jordan returns amazed by what he has told her, but she is unable to tell Nick what it is.

Nick begins seeing Jordan Baker as the summer continues, and he also becomes better acquainted with Gatsby. One afternoon in late July when they are driving into Manhattan for lunch, Gatsby tries to dispel the rumors circulating around himself, and he tells Nick that he is the son of very wealthy people who are all dead and that he is an Oxford man and a war hero. Nick is skeptical about this. At lunch he meets Gatsby’s business partner Meyer Wolfsheim, the man who fixed the World Series in 1919 (based on a real person and a real event from Fitzgerald’s day). Later, at tea, Jordan Baker tells Nick the surprising thing that Gatsby had told her in confidence at his party: Gatsby had known Nick’s cousin Daisy almost five years earlier in Louisville and they had been in love, but then he went away to fight in the war and she married Tom Buchanan. Gatsby bought his house on West Egg so he could be across the water from her.

At Gatsby’s request, Nick agrees to invite Daisy to his house, where Gatsby can meet her. A few days later he has them both over for tea, and Daisy is astonished to see Gatsby after nearly five years. The meeting is at first uncomfortable, and Nick steps outside for half an hour to give the two of them privacy. When he returns, they seem fully reconciled , Gatsby glowing with happiness and Daisy in tears. Afterward they go next door to Gatsby’s enormous house, and Gatsby shows off its impressive rooms to Daisy.

As the days pass, Tom becomes aware of Daisy’s association with Gatsby. Disliking it, he shows up at one of Gatsby’s parties with his wife. It becomes clear that Daisy does not like the party and is appalled by the impropriety of the new-money crowd at West Egg. Tom suspects that Gatsby is a bootlegger, and he says so. Voicing his dismay to Nick after the party is over, Gatsby explains that he wants Daisy to tell Tom she never loved him and then marry him as though the years had never passed.

Gatsby’s wild parties cease thereafter, and Daisy goes over to Gatsby’s house in the afternoons. On a boiling hot day near the end of the summer, Nick arrives for lunch at the Buchanans’ house; Gatsby and Jordan have also been invited. In the dining room, Daisy pays Gatsby a compliment that makes clear her love for him, and, when Tom notices this, he insists they drive into town.

Daisy and Gatsby leave in Tom’s blue coupe, while Tom drives Jordan and Nick in Gatsby’s garish yellow car. On the way, Tom stops for gas at George Wilson’s garage in the valley of ashes, and Wilson tells Tom that he is planning to move west with Myrtle as soon as he can raise the money. This news shakes Tom considerably, and he speeds on toward Manhattan, catching up with Daisy and Gatsby.

The whole party ends up in a parlor at the Plaza Hotel, hot and in bad temper . As they are about to drink mint juleps to cool off, Tom confronts Gatsby directly on the subject of his relationship with Daisy. Daisy tries to calm them down, but Gatsby insists that Daisy and he have always been in love and that she has never loved Tom. As the fight escalates and Daisy threatens to leave her husband, Tom reveals what he learned from an investigation into Gatsby’s affairs—that he had earned his money by selling illegal alcohol at drugstores in Chicago with Wolfsheim after Prohibition laws went into effect. Gatsby tries to deny it, but Daisy has lost her resolve, and his cause seems hopeless. As they leave the Plaza, Nick realizes that it is his 30th birthday.

Gatsby and Daisy leave together in Gatsby’s car, with Daisy driving. On the road they hit and kill Myrtle, who, after having a vehement argument with her husband, had run into the street toward Gatsby’s passing car, thinking it was Tom. Terrified, Daisy continues driving, but the car is seen by witnesses. Coming behind them, Tom stops his car when he sees a commotion on the road. He is stunned and devastated when he finds the body of his mistress dead on a table in Wilson’s garage.

Wilson accusingly tells him it was a yellow car that hit her, but Tom insists it was not his and drives on to East Egg in tears. Back at the Buchanans’ house in East Egg, Nick finds Gatsby hiding in the garden and learns that it was Daisy who was driving, though Gatsby insists that he will say it was he if his car is found. He says he will wait outside Daisy’s house in case Tom abuses Daisy.

The next morning Nick goes over to Gatsby’s house, where he has returned, dejected . Nick advises him to go away, afraid that his car will be traced. He refuses, and that night he tells Nick the truth about his past: he had come from a poor farming family and had met Daisy in Louisville while serving in the army, but he was too poor to marry her at the time. He earned his incredible wealth only after the war (by bootlegging , as Tom discovered).

Reluctantly, Nick leaves for work, while Gatsby continues to wait for a call from Daisy. That afternoon, George Wilson arrives in East Egg, where Tom tells him that it was Gatsby who killed his wife. Wilson makes his way to Gatsby’s house, where he finds Gatsby in his pool. Wilson shoots Gatsby and then himself. Afterward the Buchanans leave Long Island. They give no forwarding address. Nick arranges Gatsby’s funeral, although only two people attend , one of whom is Gatsby’s father. Nick moves back to the Midwest, disgusted with life in the East.

Set in the Jazz Age (a term popularized by Fitzgerald), The Great Gatsby vividly captures its historical moment: the economic boom in America after World War I, the new jazz music, the free-flowing illegal liquor. As Fitzgerald later remarked in an essay about the Roaring Twenties , it was “a whole race going hedonistic, deciding on pleasure.”

According to F. Scott Fitzgerald, the 1920s witnessed “a whole race going hedonistic, deciding on pleasure.”

The brazenly lavish culture of West Egg is a reflection of the new prosperity that was possible during Prohibition , when illegal schemes involving the black-market selling of liquor abounded. Such criminal enterprises are the source of Gatsby’s income and finance his incredible parties, which are probably based on parties Fitzgerald himself attended when he lived on Long Island in the early 1920s.

The racial anxieties of the period are also evident in the novel; Tom’s diatribe on The Rise of the Colored Empires —a reference to a real book published in 1920 by the American political scientist Lothrop Stoddard—points to the burgeoning eugenics movement in the United States during the early 20th century.

Fitzgerald finished The Great Gatsby in early 1925 while he was living in France, and Scribner’s published it in April of the same year. Fitzgerald struggled considerably in choosing a title, toying with Trimalchio and Under the Red, White and Blue , among others; he was never satisfied with the title The Great Gatsby , under which it was ultimately published.

The illustration for the novel’s original dust jacket was commissioned by Fitzgerald’s editor Maxwell Perkins seven months before he was in possession of the finished manuscript. It was designed by Francis Cugat, a Spanish-born artist who did Hollywood movie posters, and depicts the eyes of a woman hanging over the carnival lights of Coney Island . The design was well-loved by Fitzgerald, and he claimed in a letter to Perkins that he had written it into the book, though whether this refers to the eyes of Doctor Eckleburg or something else is uncertain. Cugat’s painting is now one of the most well-known and celebrated examples of jacket art in American literature .

While Fitzgerald considered The Great Gatsby to be his greatest achievement at the time it was published, the book was neither a critical nor a commercial success upon publication. Reviews were mixed, and the 20,000 copies of its first printing sold slowly. It was printed one more time during Fitzgerald’s life, and there were still copies unsold from this second printing when he died in 1940.

The Great Gatsby was rediscovered a few years later and enjoyed an exponential growth in popularity in the 1950s, soon becoming a standard text of high-school curricula in the United States. It remains one of Scribner’s best sellers, and it is now considered a masterpiece of American fiction. In 2021 it entered the public domain in the United States.

There have been several film adaptations of the novel, most notably a production directed by Jack Clayton in 1974, starring Robert Redford as Gatsby, and one in 2013 directed by Baz Luhrmann , starring Leonardo DiCaprio .

scene from Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby

Above all, The Great Gatsby has been read as a pessimistic examination of the American Dream . At its center is a remarkable rags-to-riches story, of a boy from a poor farming background who has built himself up to fabulous wealth. Jay Gatsby is someone who once had nothing but who now entertains rich and celebrated people in his enormous house on Long Island. However, even though Gatsby’s wealth may be commensurate with the likes of Tom Buchanan’s, he is ultimately unable to break into the “distinguished secret society” of those who were born wealthy. His attempt to win Daisy Buchanan, a woman from a well-established family of the American elite, ends in disaster and his death.

This tension between “new money” and “old money” is represented in the book by the contrast between West Egg and East Egg. West Egg is portrayed as a tawdry, brash society that “chafed under the old euphemisms,” full of people who have made their money in an age of unprecedented materialism. East Egg, in contrast, is a refined society populated by America’s “staid nobility,” those who have inherited their wealth and who frown on the rawness of West Egg. In the end, it is East Egg that might be said to triumph: while Gatsby is shot and his garish parties are dispersed, Tom and Daisy are unharmed by the terrible events of the summer.

The Great Gatsby is memorable for the rich symbolism that underpins its story. Throughout the novel, the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock is a recurrent image that beckons to Gatsby’s sense of ambition. It is a symbol of “the orgastic future” he believes in so intensely, toward which his arms are outstretched when Nick first sees him. It is this “extraordinary gift for hope” that Nick admires so much in Gatsby, his “heightened sensitivity to the promises of life.” Once Daisy is within Gatsby’s reach, however, the “colossal significance” of the green light disappears. In essence, the green light is an unattainable promise, one that Nick understands in universal terms at the end of the novel: a future we never grasp but for which we are always reaching. Nick compares it to the hope the early settlers had in the promise of the New World. Gatsby’s dream fails, then, when he fixates his hope on a real object, Daisy. His once indefinite ambition is thereafter limited to the real world and becomes prey to all of its corruption.

The valley of ashes—an industrial wasteland located between West Egg and Manhattan—serves as a counterpoint to the brilliant future promised by the green light. As a dumping ground for the refuse of nearby factories, it stands as the consequence of America’s postwar economic boom, the ugly truth behind the consumer culture that props up newly rich people like Gatsby. In this valley live men like George Wilson who are “already crumbling.” They are the underclasses that live without hope, all the while bolstering the greed of a thriving economy. Notably, Gatsby does not in the end escape the ash of this economy that built him: it is George Wilson who comes to kill him, described as an “ashen” figure the moment before he shoots Gatsby.

Over the valley of ashes hover the bespectacled eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, which appear on the advertising billboard of an oculist. These eyes almost become a moral conscience in the morally vacuous world of The Great Gatsby ; to George Wilson they are the eyes of God. They are said to “brood” and “[keep] their vigil” over the valley, and they witness some of the most corrupt moments of the novel: Tom and Myrtle’s affair, Myrtle’s death, and the valley itself, full of America’s industrial waste and the toiling poor. However, in the end they are another product of the materialistic culture of the age, set up by Doctor Eckleburg to “fatten his practice.” Behind them is just one more person trying to get rich. Their function as a divine being who watches and judges is thus ultimately null , and the novel is left without a moral anchor.

April 19, 1925 Scott Fitzgerald Looks Into Middle Age By EDWIN CLARK THE GREAT GATSBY By F. Scott Fitzgerald. Of the many new writers that sprang into notice with the advent of the post-war period, Scott Fitzgerald has remained the steadiest performer and the most entertaining. Short stories, novels and a play have followed with consistent regularity since he became the philosopher of the flapper with "This Side of Paradise." With shrewd observation and humor he reflected the Jazz Age. Now he has said farewell to his flappers-perhaps because they have grown up-and is writing of the older sisters that have married. But marriage has not changed their world, only the locale of their parties. To use a phrase of Burton Rascoe's-his hurt romantics are still seeking that other side of paradise. And it might almost be said that "The Great Gatsby" is the last stage of illusion in this absurd chase. For middle age is certainly creeping up on Mr. Fitzgerald's flappers. In all great arid spots nature provides an oasis. So when the Atlantic seaboard was hermetically sealed by law, nature provided an outlet, or inlet rather, in Long Island. A place of innate natural charm, it became lush and luxurious under the stress of this excessive attention, a seat of festive activities. It expresses one phase of the great grotesque spectacle of our American scene. It is humor, irony, ribaldry, pathos and loveliness. Out of this grotesque fusion of incongruities has slowly become conscious a new humor-a strictly American product. It is not sensibility, as witness the writings of Don Marquis, Robert Benchley and Ring Lardner. It is the spirit of "Processional" and Donald Douglas's "The Grand Inquisitor": a conflict of spirituality set against the web of our commercial life. Both boisterous and tragic, it animates this new novel by Mr. Fitzgerald with whimsical magic and simple pathos that is realized with economy and restraint. The story of Jay Gatsby of West Egg is told by Nick Caraway, who is one of the legion from the Middle West who have moved on to New York to win from its restless indifference-well, the aspiration that arises in the Middle West-and finds in Long Island a fascinating but dangerous playground. In the method of telling, "The Great Gatsby" is reminiscent of Henry James's "Turn of the Screw." You will recall that the evil of that mysterious tale which so endangered the two children was never exactly stated beyond suggested generalization. Gatsby's fortune, business, even his connection with underworld figures, remain vague generalizations. He is wealthy, powerful, a man who knows how to get things done. He has no friends, only business associates, and the throngs who come to his Saturday night parties. Of his uncompromising love-his love for Daisy Buchanan-his effort to recapture the past romance-we are explicitly informed. This patient romantic hopefulness against existing conditions symbolizes Gatsby. And like the "Turn of the Screw," "The Great Gatsby" is more a long short story than a novel. Nick Carraway had known Tom Buchanan at New Haven. Daisy, his wife, was a distant cousin. When he came East Nick was asked to call at their place at East Egg. The post-war reactions were at their height-every one was restless-every one was looking for a substitute for the excitement of the war years. Buchanan had acquired another woman. Daisy was bored, broken in spirit and neglected. Gatsby, his parties and his mysterious wealth were the gossip of the hour. At the Buchanans Nick met Jordan Baker; through them both Daisy again meets Gatsby, to whom she had been engaged before she married Buchanan. The inevitable consequence that follows, in which violence takes its toll, is almost incidental, for in the overtones-and this is a book of potent overtones-the decay of souls is more tragic. With sensitive insight and keen psychological observation, Fitzgerald discloses in these people a meanness of spirit, carelessness and absence of loyalties. He cannot hate them, for they are dumb in their insensate selfishness, and only to be pitied. The philosopher of the flapper has escaped the mordant, but he has turned grave. A curious book, a mystical, glamourous story of today. It takes a deeper cut at life than hitherto has been enjoyed by Mr. Fitzgerald. He writes well-he always has-for he writes naturally, and his sense of form is becoming perfected. Return to the Books Home Page

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Parents' guide to, the great gatsby.

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 12 Reviews
Kids Say 73 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

American classic captures romance, debauchery of Jazz Age.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 14+?

The adults consume a great deal of alcohol, which fuels some bad behavior. As th

There are many examples of excessive material wealth in The Great Gatsby. In fac

In one scene, a man punches his lover in the face during an argument. At another

Curse words are not used, but other offensive language is. The book includes the

Adults in the book flirt and kiss. Reference is also made to extramarital affair

Any Positive Content?

The Great Gatsby is a book very much of its time. Readers will learn about life

Many of the characters behave irresponsibly at best, and the most romantic chara

There are a lot more negative role models in The Great Gatsby than positive ones

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

The adults consume a great deal of alcohol, which fuels some bad behavior. As the novel was written and takes place in the United States before the Surgeon General's warning, cigarette smoking is also ubiquitous.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

There are many examples of excessive material wealth in The Great Gatsby . In fact, the majority of the culture during this time was defined by consumerism and flashy lifestyles. Gatsby's way of life in particular is very much dictated by his devotion to Daisy, which explains the lavish mansion and extravagant parties to impress the object of his affection.

Violence & Scariness

In one scene, a man punches his lover in the face during an argument. At another point, a woman is fatally hit by a car, and the condition of her body is described briefly but graphically.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Curse words are not used, but other offensive language is. The book includes the word "kike," and characters are prejudiced toward Jewish and African-American people.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Adults in the book flirt and kiss. Reference is also made to extramarital affairs, and Fitzgerald describes the past relationship of two characters, saying that the man "took her," though sex is never actually described.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Educational Value

The Great Gatsby is a book very much of its time. Readers will learn about life in New York during the Jazz Age (1920s), and about drinking behavior during Prohibition. Also, the character Tom Buchanan converses about books he likes that represent bigoted views held by many whites at that time. These beliefs are often offensive, but they do inform the reader about the time Fitzgerald portrays.

Positive Messages

Many of the characters behave irresponsibly at best, and the most romantic character in the novel, Gatsby himself, is probably involved in criminal business dealings. The most positive message in the book is probably that readers should learn from the characters' mistakes. However, there's something beautiful in Gatsby's undying devotion to Daisy. Though Fitzgerald deeply questions the wisdom of trying to recapture the past, Gatsby believes in his dream of restoring lost love in a way that's childlike and touching.

Positive Role Models

There are a lot more negative role models in The Great Gatsby than positive ones. The narrator, Nick, is largely a foil for the lovers' bad behavior, but his intention of being a real friend to Gatsby, especially in the end, is admirable.

Parents need to know that THE GREAT GATSBY is at once a romantic and cynical novel about the wealth and habits of a group of New Yorkers during the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald's writing is unassailably magnificent, as he paints a grim portrait of shallow characters who maneuver themselves into complex situations. This classic American novel is required reading for a lot of high school students, and it can definitely be appreciated and understood on some levels by teenagers. However, Fitzgerald's use of language and symbolism is best appreciated by mature readers able to analyze literature and think critically. Parents also need to know that some characters express racial and religious prejudice.

Where to Read

Parent and kid reviews.

Parents say (12)
Kids say (73)

Based on 12 parent reviews

Little people living lives too larger for them

Themes of female sexuality,, what's the story.

Nick Carraway spends a summer living in a cheap rental house surrounded by lavish mansions on Long Island in the 1920s. Among his neighbors are his beautiful cousin Daisy, her loutish husband Tom, and her former lover, Jay Gatsby, whose history and epic parties are fodder for gossip. Nick becomes caught up in the machinery of more than one romantic triangle as the summer begins to fade and Gatsby's orchestra stops playing.

Is It Any Good?

THE GREAT GATSBY is a magnificent novel on every level. Fitzgerald writes about the Jazz Age in language that beautifully evokes music. He writes about a hot day in a way that almost makes you sweat. His characters are well-drawn, and the plot is engaging and fast-paced. Though this novel is possibly best appreciated by college-level readers, advanced high school students will find a lot to enjoy and discuss.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Gatsby's five-year quest to regain Daisy's heart. Is his dream realistic? What is Fitzgerald saying about trying to recapture the past?

What kind of person is Nick? Do you feel he is a well-formed character? Why was he so devoted to Gatsby at the end of the book?

What is Gatsby really like? How is he different from the widely held ideas about him in the book?

Why do you think this book is considered a classic?

Book Details

Author : F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genre : Literary Fiction
Book type : Fiction
Publisher : Scribner
Publication date : April 10, 1925
Number of pages : 192
Last updated : September 30, 2015

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Book Review: The Great Gatsby

Director of programs and education, martha williams, recommends the great gatsby by f. scott fitzgerald..

It’s been at least ten years since I last read The Great Gatsby . Like many, I first read the novel in high school, where some of my peers adored the story while others adamantly hated it. I remember being mesmerized by Fitzgerald’s language, impressed by narrator Nick Carraway’s observations of humanity, and appalled by the rich and “careless” Buchanans and the wreckage left in their wake. I honestly didn’t know what to think of Jay “The Great” Gatsby himself—the self-created man who yearns for Daisy Buchanan and a revival of their young love.

Upon re-reading the book in my 20s, I saw new complexities and felt a fresh tenderness for Jay Gatsby, who risks everything for a dream. On this most recent reading, now in my late 30s, I saw anew the “infinite hope” for possibility that Gatsby stands for, even as we know he is doomed from the novel’s opening pages. I felt drawn to Gatsby’s belief – “Can’t repeat the past? … Why of course you can!” – even as I am now (somewhat) wise enough to know better. Despite the darkness hanging over Nick’s telling of what happened that dangerous and thrilling summer in 1922, when he met his neighbor Gatsby and attended his extravagant Long Island parties…

…I soak up the story every time of this dreamer chasing what is already behind him.

If I had to say what The Great Gatsby is about, I’d say it’s about hope, about longing and nostalgia; but it’s also about class and disillusionment, memory, and performance. Do you see how I’m avoiding summarizing the plot for you? I find it nearly impossible to summarize in a few sentences all that Fitzgerald captures with this slim masterpiece. He captures a period 100 years distant from our own—the wild Jazz Age of 1920s New York—but alive with the same concerns of today: class mobility, race and immigration, the realities of the “American dream,” and the dangers of seeking a past that has already slipped away. And even through this weight…

…I am born aloft with each reading, courtesy of Fitzgerald’s myriad layers and the beautiful language that unfolds with each visit.

Join us this winter as we read The Great Gatsby together as our 2024 community-wide Winter Read . Our programs January 31 to March 15 delve into the novel’s history, examine why it still resonates (or doesn’t!), how it was reborn and became standard classroom fare decades after being published, and how contemporary writers are reimagining the story today and connecting new readers to this timeless tale. Through these programs and discussion groups throughout the valley, I hope you’ll embark on this story for the first time or revisit it with us, engage in conversation with your neighbors, families, and friends, and…

…experience how stories bring us together and give us ways to talk about America and our place in it.

Find The Great Gatsby in print, ebook, eaudiobook, and CD here.

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The Great Gatsby: The Original 1925 Edition (A F. Scott Fitzgerald Classic Novel)

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The Great Gatsby: The Original 1925 Edition (A F. Scott Fitzgerald Classic Novel) Paperback – April 27, 2021

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, the novel depicts narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan.

A youthful romance Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra King, and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island's North Shore in 1922 inspired the novel. Following a move to the French Riviera, he completed a rough draft in 1924. He submitted the draft to editor Maxwell Perkins, who persuaded Fitzgerald to revise the work over the following winter. After his revisions, Fitzgerald was satisfied with the text, but remained ambivalent about the book's title and considered several alternatives. The final title he desired was Under the Red, White, and Blue. Painter Francis Cugat's final cover design impressed Fitzgerald who incorporated a visual element from the art into the novel.

Gatsby continues to attract popular and scholarly attention. The novel was most recently adapted to film in 2013 by director Baz Luhrmann, while contemporary scholars emphasize the novel's treatment of social class, inherited wealth compared to those who are self-made, race, environmentalism, and 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.

A True Classic that Belongs on Every Bookshelf!

Print length 110 pages
Language English
Publication date April 27, 2021
Dimensions 6 x 0.25 x 9 inches
ISBN-13 979-8745274824
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ASIN ‏ : ‎ B093MYWTT5
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (April 27, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 110 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8745274824
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.3 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.25 x 9 inches
#17 in Classic American Literature
#17 in American Historical Romance (Books)
#183 in Classic Literature & Fiction

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Fitzgerald Is Happy You Ended Up Here

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About the author, f. scott fitzgerald.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in St Paul, Minnesota, and went to Princeton University which he left in 1917 to join the army. Fitzgerald was said to have epitomised the Jazz Age, an age inhabited by a generation he defined as 'grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken'.

In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre. Their destructive relationship and her subsequent mental breakdowns became a major influence on his writing. Among his publications were five novels, This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night and The Love of the Last Tycoon (his last and unfinished work): six volumes of short stories and The Crack-Up, a selection of autobiographical pieces.

Fitzgerald died suddenly in 1940. After his death The New York Times said of him that 'He was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a "generation" ... he might have interpreted them and even guided them, as in their middle years they saw a different and nobler freedom threatened with destruction.'

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‘The Great Gatsby’ review (the book, that is, circa 1925)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, his wife, Zelda, and daughter, Frances (a.k.a. Scottie), celebrate Christmas 1925 in Paris.

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Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” opens wide this Friday. Eighty-eight years before -- to the day -- the Los Angeles Times ran this review of the original “The Great Gatsby,” the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Today, perception of the book’s reception in 1925 varies -- some say it was successful , others that it was a dismal failure -- but our review, by Lillian C. Ford, is purely positive. And she captures something of what has made the book a classic.

“The Seamy Side of Society,” read the headline, with this below: “In ‘The Great Gatsby,’ F. Scott Fitzgerald Creates a New Kind of Underworld Character and Throws the Spotlight on the Jaded Lives of the Idle Rich.” The full book review follows:

F. Scott Fitzgerald, who won premature fame in 1920 as the author of “This Side of Paradise,” a book that first turned into literary material the flapper of wealthy parents and of social position, whose principal lack was inhibitions, has in “The Great Gatsby” written a remarkable study of today. It is a novel not to be neglected by those who follow the trend of fiction.

Wisely, Mr. Fitzgerald tells his story through the medium of Nick Carroway [sic], who, after graduation from Yale in 1915 had “participated in the delayed Teutonic migration known as the great war.” When the story opens, Carroway had left his western home and had gone east to learn the bond business. He was living in a tiny house at West Egg, Long Island, near an emblazoned mansion owned by the great Gatsby, an almost mythical person who lived sumptuously, knew no one, but entertained everyone at his great parties given Saturday nights.

Very gradually this Gatsby is revealed as a restless, yearning, baffled nobody, whose connection with bootleggers and bond thieves is suggested, but never mapped out, an odd mixture of vanity and humility, of overgrown ego and of wistful seeker after life.

Across the bay from Gatsby’s mansion, in one of the white palaces of fashionable East Egg, lived Tom and Daisy Buchanan, transplanted from Chicago, but wealthy enough to flourish anywhere. Polo, jazz, cocktails were their earmarks. He, who had been a famous football end a few years before, was now “a sturdy straw-haired man of 30 year of age, with a hard mouth and supercilious manner.” Of his wife, Daisy, Mr. Fitzgerald tells us: “Her face was sad and lovely, with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright, passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget; a singing compulsion, a whispered ‘Listen,’ a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting thing hovering in the next hour.”

Daisy soon confided to Nick that Buchanan had “a girl” and Buchanan verified this by asking Nick to a New York party, in which the blowsy wife of a village garage-keeper appeared as the mistress of a week-end flat supported by Buchanan.

That Daisy was humiliated, discomfited, wearied, was her not-too-zealously guarded secret. So when she met Gatsby and discovered in him an old lover, to whom she had been engaged when he was a lieutenant in a training camp, it was not strange that she should dally with him once more.

But it is for no such ordinary denouement that Mr. Fitzgerald tells his tale. Instead, he builds up a tense situation in which Daisy has the chance to choose Gatsby, with his doubtful antecedents and mysterious present connections, or to be as false as it has ever fallen to the lot of woman to be. She took the meaner way, the safe way, and plotted with her husband to save herself from smirch while letting Gatsby in for the worst that could befall him.

Character could not be more skillfully revealed than it is here. Buchanan and his wife, secure, but beneath contempt, standing shoulder to shoulder in the crisis, is a sad picture. “It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back to their money, or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

The story is powerful as much for what is suggested as for what is told. It leaves the reader in a mood of chastened wonder, in which fact after fact, implication after implication is pondered over, weighed and measured. And when all are linked together, the weight of the story as a revelation of life and as a work of art becomes apparent. And it is very great. Mr. Fitzgerald has certainly arrived.

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Carolyn Kellogg is a prize-winning writer who served as Books editor of the Los Angeles Times for three years. She joined the L.A. Times in 2010 as staff writer in Books and left in 2018. In 2019, she was a judge of the National Book Award in Nonfiction. Prior to coming to The Times, Kellogg was editor of LAist.com and the web editor of the public radio show Marketplace. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA in English from the University of Southern California.

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Title	The Great Gatsby
Credits	Produced by Alex Cabal for the Standard Ebooks project, based on a transcription produced for Project Gutenberg Australia.
Summary	"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a novel written in the early 20th century. The story is mainly narrated by Nick Carraway, who reflects on the life of his enigmatic neighbor, Jay Gatsby, and the extravagant world of wealth and excess he inhabits. The novel explores themes of the American Dream, love, and social class. At the start of the novel, Nick Carraway reflects on advice from his father about withholding judgment of others, which sets the stage for the unfolding narrative. We learn about Nick's background, his move to West Egg, and his connection to wealthy acquaintances like Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Nick's first glimpse of Gatsby is during a moment of solitude when he sees Gatsby reaching out toward a distant green light, symbolizing his unattainable dreams. This opening portion lays the groundwork for the intricate relationships and social dynamics in the world of 1920s America, hinting at the luxurious yet hollow lives that many characters lead. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Language	English
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EBook-No.	64317
Release Date	Jan 17, 2021
Most Recently Updated	Feb 2, 2024
Copyright Status	Public domain in the USA.
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THE GREAT GATSBY

A graphic novel adaptation.

by F. Scott Fitzgerald & K. Woodman-Maynard ; illustrated by K. Woodman-Maynard ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 5, 2021

A disappointing stand-in for the original.

Nearly a century after its first publication, the English class mainstay is presented in graphic form, presenting the story of Nick, a young man who rents a mansion in Long Island for the summer, and an enigmatic party host named Gatsby.

Fitzgerald’s dialogue appears in speech bubbles while Nick’s signature nonjudgmental judgments are woven into the art itself, appearing in the beam of a lightbulb, the shadow of the self-important Tom Buchanan’s imposing frame, or the chaise that Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker seemingly ceaselessly lounge on. Woodman-Maynard’s adaptation of the text is understandably quite abridged, but it does the book no favors. The great revelation that Gatsby is (spoiler alert) not a trust fund kid but an imposter is afforded a single page, and the fact of his past affair with Daisy is so murkily depicted that it feels less tragic romance and more moony boy and Manic Pixie Dream Girl. The class issues that make the original novel so compelling are thus less than adequately examined. Where the book truly shines is in a few striking images, some metaphorical and some text based, rendered in cool, languid watercolor and digital art. As Woodman-Maynard indicates in the author’s note, those who are not familiar with the novel should begin there; those more familiar with the story will be able to fill in the gaps as they read this condensed version.

Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-5362-1301-0

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Candlewick

Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS | GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS

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More by F. Scott Fitzgerald

BOOK REVIEW

by F. Scott Fitzgerald edited by Dave Page

by F. Scott Fitzgerald edited by James L.W. West III

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

SUPERMAN SMASHES THE KLAN

by Gene Luen Yang ; illustrated by Gurihiru ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 12, 2020

A clever and timely conversation on reclaiming identity and acknowledging one’s full worth.

Superman confronts racism and learns to accept himself with the help of new friends.

In this graphic-novel adaptation of the 1940s storyline entitled “The Clan of the Fiery Cross” from The Adventures of Superman radio show, readers are reintroduced to the hero who regularly saves the day but is unsure of himself and his origins. The story also focuses on Roberta Lee, a young Chinese girl. She and her family have just moved from Chinatown to Metropolis proper, and mixed feelings abound. Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane’s colleague from the Daily Planet , takes a larger role here, befriending his new neighbors, the Lees. An altercation following racial slurs directed at Roberta’s brother after he joins the local baseball team escalates into an act of terrorism by the Klan of the Fiery Kross. What starts off as a run-of-the-mill superhero story then becomes a nuanced and personal exploration of the immigrant experience and blatant and internalized racism. Other main characters are White, but Black police inspector William Henderson fights his own battles against prejudice. Clean lines, less-saturated coloring, and character designs reminiscent of vintage comics help set the tone of this period piece while the varied panel cuts and action scenes give it a more modern sensibility. Cantonese dialogue is indicated through red speech bubbles; alien speech is in green.

Pub Date: May 12, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-77950-421-0

Publisher: DC

Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020

SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES | GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS

More by Gene Luen Yang

by Gene Luen Yang ; illustrated by Kendall Goode & Alison Acton

by Gene Luen Yang ; illustrated by LeUyen Pham

by Gene Luen Yang ; illustrated by Les McClaine & Alison Acton

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Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2017

New York Times Bestseller

by Kwame Alexander with Mary Rand Hess ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2017

A contemporary hero’s journey, brilliantly told.

The 17-year-old son of a troubled rock star is determined to find his own way in life and love.

On the verge of adulthood, Blade Morrison wants to leave his father’s bad-boy reputation for drug-and-alcohol–induced antics and his sister’s edgy lifestyle behind. The death of his mother 10 years ago left them all without an anchor. Named for the black superhero, Blade shares his family’s connection to music but resents the paparazzi that prevent him from having an open relationship with the girl that he loves. However, there is one secret even Blade is unaware of, and when his sister reveals the truth of his heritage during a bitter fight, Blade is stunned. When he finally gains some measure of equilibrium, he decides to investigate, embarking on a search that will lead him to a small, remote village in Ghana. Along the way, he meets people with a sense of purpose, especially Joy, a young Ghanaian who helps him despite her suspicions of Americans. This rich novel in verse is full of the music that forms its core. In addition to Alexander and co-author Hess’ skilled use of language, references to classic rock songs abound. Secondary characters add texture to the story: does his girlfriend have real feelings for Blade? Is there more to his father than his inability to stay clean and sober? At the center is Blade, fully realized and achingly real in his pain and confusion.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-310-76183-9

Page Count: 464

Publisher: Blink

Review Posted Online: April 30, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT LITERARY FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES

More by Kwame Alexander

by Kwame Alexander & Randy Preston ; illustrated by Melissa Sweet

by Kwame Alexander

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The Great Gatsby

Robert Redford as Gatsby.

The Great Gatsby is a superficially beautiful hunk of a movie with nothing much in common with the spirit of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel. I wonder what Fitzgerald, whose prose was so graceful, so elegantly controlled, would have made of it: of the willingness to spend so much time and energy on exterior effect while never penetrating to the souls of the characters. It would take about the same time to read Fitzgerald’s novel as to view this movie — and that’s what I’d recommend.

The movie is “faithful” to the novel with a vengeance — to what happens in the novel, that is, and not to the feel, mood, and spirit of it. Yet I’ve never thought the events in The Great Gatsby were that important to the novel’s success; Fitzgerald, who came out of St. Paul to personify the romance of an age, was writing in a way about himself when he created Gatsby. The mundane Midwestern origins had been replaced by a new persona, by a flash and charisma that sometimes only concealed the despair underneath. For Fitzgerald, there was always something unattainable; and for Gatsby, it was Daisy Buchanan, the lost love of his youth, forever symbolized by that winking green beacon at the end of her dock.

The beacon and the other Fitzgerald symbols are in this movie version, but they communicate about as much as the great stone heads on Easter Island. They’re memorials to a novel in which they had meaning. The art director and set decorator seem to have ripped whole pages out of Fitzgerald and gone to work to improve on his descriptions. Daisy and her husband, the ruthless millionaire Tom Buchanan, live almost drowning in whites, yellows, and ennui. Tom’s mistress Myrtle and her husband, the shabby filling station owner George, live in a wasteland of ashes in Fitzgerald’s novel; in the movie, they seem to have landed on the moon.

All of this unfeeling physical excess might have been overcome by performances. But the director, Jack Clayton , having assembled a promising cast, fails to exploit them very well. When the casting of Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby was announced, I objected because he didn’t fit my notion of Gatsby: He was too substantial, too assured, even too handsome. I saw him as Tom Buchanan, and somebody else as Gatsby ( Jack Nicholson , maybe, or Bruce Dern — who plays Tom).

Having seen the movie, I think maybe I was wrong: Redford could have played Gatsby. I’m not even sure it’s his fault he doesn’t. The first time Clayton shows us Gatsby, it’s a low-angle shot of a massive figure seen against the night sky and framed by marble: This isn’t the romantic Gatsby on his doomed quest, it’s Charles Foster Kane. A scene where Gatsby reaches out as if to snatch the green beacon in his hand is true to the book, but the movie’s literal showing of it looks silly.

These hints of things to come lead up to two essential scenes in which Clayton fails to give us a Gatsby we care about. The first is the initial meeting between Gatsby and Nick (Gatsby wants Nick, his neighbor and Daisy’s cousin, to invite her to tea so they can meet again). Redford is so inarticulate and formal in this scene with Nick that we laugh; it’s the first time we hear him talk, and he’s so mannered that the acting upstages the content of the scene. Doesn’t that have to be Clayton’s fault?

We know Redford has range enough to have played the scene in several better ways. And then the actual reunion between Gatsby and Daisy — the moment on which the rest of the movie is going to depend — gives us Gatsby’s toothpaste grin and Daisy’s stunned reaction and holds both for so long that any tension reduces itself to the ridiculous. It doesn’t even feel as if Gatsby’s happy to see Daisy — more that he assumes she’s overjoyed to see him.

The message of the novel, if I read it correctly, is that Gatsby, despite his dealings with gamblers and bootleggers, is a romantic, naive, and heroic product of the Midwest — and that his idealism is doomed in any confrontation with the reckless wealth of the Buchanans. This doesn’t come through in the movie. When Nick, at his last meeting with Gatsby, tells him how much he admires him (“You’re worth the whole crowd of them”), we frankly don’t know why unless we’ve read the book.

Oh, we’re told, to be sure: The sound track contains narration by Nick that is based pretty closely on his narration in the novel. But we don’t feel. We’ve been distanced by the movie’s overproduction. Even the actors seem somewhat cowed by the occasion; an exception is Bruce Dern, who just goes ahead and gives us a convincing Tom Buchanan. We don’t have to be told the ways in which Tom is indifferent to human feeling, because we can sense them.

But we can’t penetrate the mystery of Gatsby. Nor, to be honest, can we quite understand what’s so special about Daisy Buchanan. Not as she’s played by Mia Farrow , all squeaks and narcissism and empty sophistication. In the novel, Gatsby never understands that he is too good for Daisy. In the movie, we never understand why he thought she was good enough for him. And that’s what’s missing.

That, and one other small item: How could a screenplay that plundered Fitzgerald’s novel so literally, that quoted so much of the narration and dialogue, have ended with a rinky-dink version of “Ain’t We Got Fun” instead of the most famous last sentence of any novel of the century? Maybe because the movie doesn’t ever come close to understanding it: “And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Bruce Dern as Tom Buchanan
Scott Wilson as George Wilson
Howard da Silva as Meyer Wolfsheim
Karen Black as Myrtle Wilson
Edward Herrmann as Klipspringer
Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway
Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan
Lois Chiles as Jordan Baker
Robert Redford as Gatsby
Robert Blossom as Mr. Gatz

Produced by

David Merrick

Screenplay by

Francis Ford Coppola

Directed by

Jack Clayton

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THE Great Gatsby: Review

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COMMENTS

Read TIME's Original Review of The Great Gatsby
TIME's original review, though noting Fitzgerald's talent, gave little hint of the fame waiting for the book: THE GREAT GATSBY—F. Scott Fitzgerald—Scribner—($2.00).
'The Great Gatsby' review (the book, that is, circa 1925)
Eighty-eight years before -- to the day -- the Los Angeles Times ran this review of the original "The Great Gatsby," the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Today, perception of the book's ...
The Great Gatsby Review
Book Title: The Great Gatsby Book Description: 'The Great Gatsby' is an unforgettable and beautiful novel that explores the nature of dreams and their value in contemporary society. Book Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald Book Edition: First Limited Edition Book Format: Hardcover Publisher - Organization: Charles Scribner's Sons Date published: April 10, 1925 ISBN: -14-006229-2
The world's most misunderstood novel
Robert Redford and Mia Farrow in the 1974 film of The Great Gatsby (Credit: Alamy) The Great Gatsby is synonymous with parties, glitz and glamour - but this is just one of many misunderstandings ...
Time Machine: H.L. Mencken's 1925 review of 'The Great Gatsby'
Time Machine is a new Printers Row Journal feature offering a look at past Tribune books coverage. This week, we offer H.L. Mencken's 1925 review of "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott…
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby is a 1925 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, the mysterious millionaire with an obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan.. The novel was inspired by a youthful romance Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra ...
'Unimportant,' 'Cynical,' and 'Terribly Forced': What ...
"To make Gatsby really Great," Edith Wharton wrote to F. Scott Fitzgerald on April 8, 1925, "you ought to have given us his early career (not from the cradle-but from his visit to the yacht, if ...
Book Review: The Great Gatsby (1925)
F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' is a 1925 American novel finding its setting in the roaring twenties of America- the Jazz Age. It is a remarkable attempt by Fitzgerald to mock the idealistic idea of the American Dream. The book is renowned for being one of its kind, a classic that resonates with its readers to date.
Nearly a Century Later, We're Still Reading
100 Best Books of the 21st Century: As voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers — with a little help from the staff of The New York Times Book Review ...
Why Do We Keep Reading The Great Gatsby?
It's creepier and profoundly, inexorably true to the spirit of the nation. This is not a book about people, per se. Secretly, it's a novel of ideas. Gatsby meets Daisy when he's a broke soldier and senses that she requires more prosperity, so five years later he returns as almost a parody of it.
What's so great about The Great Gatsby? : r/books
It's Fitzgerald saying the American Dream is bullshit. Daisy and Tom, since they're the 1%, get away with literal murder, and don't care who they trample (Tom breaks Myrtle's nose and manipulates George into murder, Daisy leads Gatsby on, then decides to stay with her husband b/c he has high social standing).
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald's third novel. It was published in 1925. Set in Jazz Age New York, it tells the story of Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire, and his pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, a wealthy young woman whom he loved in his youth. Commercially unsuccessful upon publication, the book is now considered a classic of American fiction.
Scott Fitzgerald Looks Into Middle Age
Of his uncompromising love-his love for Daisy Buchanan-his effort to recapture the past romance-we are explicitly informed. This patient romantic hopefulness against existing conditions symbolizes Gatsby. And like the "Turn of the Screw," "The Great Gatsby" is more a long short story than a novel. Nick Carraway had known Tom Buchanan at New Haven.
The Great Gatsby Book Review
Our review: Parents say (12 ): Kids say (73 ): THE GREAT GATSBY is a magnificent novel on every level. Fitzgerald writes about the Jazz Age in language that beautifully evokes music. He writes about a hot day in a way that almost makes you sweat. His characters are well-drawn, and the plot is engaging and fast-paced.
Book Review: The Great Gatsby
Director of Programs and Education, Martha Williams, recommends The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's been at least ten years since I last read The Great Gatsby. Like many, I first read the novel in high school, where some of my peers adored the story while others adamantly hated it. I remember being mesmerized by Fitzgerald's ...
The Great Gatsby: The Original 1925 Edition (A F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby: The Original 1925 Edition (A F. Scott Fitzgerald Classic Novel) Paperback - April 27, 2021 . ... AI-generated from the text of customer reviews. Select to learn more. Readability Story quality Value for money. 50 customers mention "Readability" 46 positive 4 negative.
'The Great Gatsby' review (the book, that is, circa 1925)
May 6, 2013 12 AM PT. Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby" opens wide this Friday. Eighty-eight years before -- to the day -- the Los Angeles Times ran this review of the original "The Great ...
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Summary. "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a novel written in the early 20th century. The story is mainly narrated by Nick Carraway, who reflects on the life of his enigmatic neighbor, Jay Gatsby, and the extravagant world of wealth and excess he inhabits. The novel explores themes of the American Dream, love, and social class.
The Great Gatsby Book Cover: What's Behind Those Famous Eyes?
The original cover image was actually a painting by artist Francis Cugat, titled "Celestial Eyes.". It was painted in 1924, one year before the release of The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald liked the painting so much that he actually wrote it into the book, and gave Cugat the commission for the dust jacket before the book was finished.
THE GREAT GATSBY
As Woodman-Maynard indicates in the author's note, those who are not familiar with the novel should begin there; those more familiar with the story will be able to fill in the gaps as they read this condensed version. A disappointing stand-in for the original. (author's note) (Graphic fiction. 14-adult) 8. Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021.
The Great Gatsby movie review (1974)
146 minutes ‧ PG ‧ 1974. Roger Ebert. January 1, 1974. 5 min read. Robert Redford as Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is a superficially beautiful hunk of a movie with nothing much in common with the spirit of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel. I wonder what Fitzgerald, whose prose was so graceful, so elegantly controlled, would have made of it: of the ...

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