THE GRAT GATZBY

The novel is set in the summer of 1922 in New York City and on Long Island, in the fictional areas known as ‘West
Egg’ and ‘East Egg’. Nick Carraway, a young stockbroker has just moved from the Midwest and rented a house in
West Egg, the rich but unfashionable area of Long Island. His next-door neighbour is Jay Gatsby, a mysterious man
who lives in a magnificent mansion and gives fabulous parties Nick’s cousin, Daisy, and her husband, Tom Buchanan,
introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a beautiful, cynical young woman with whom Nick begins a relationship. Jordan tells
Nick that Tom has a mistress Myrtle Wilson. Nick receives an invitation to one of Gatsby’s parties and they become
friends. Later on, Nick will discover that Gatsby’s real name is James Gatz and that he comes from a humble
midwestern family. He made every effort to rise above poverty he even changed his name. When he was in the army
as a young man, he had a relationship with Daisy. But while Jay was in Europe during the war, Daisy, though
returning Jay’s love, had married Tom. Gatsby later made a fortune in some illegal way. He then rented a house just
on the opposite side of the bay to Daisy’s house. Thanks to Nick, Daisy and Jay meet again and begin an affair. One
day, after a lunch at the Buchanans’ house where also Gatsby is invited, they go all together to Manhattan. There
Daisy has a fight with her husband and, while driving back with Gatsby, she accidentally runs over Tom’s mistress,
Myrtle, who dies. Myrtle’s husband finds out that the car which killed her is Gatsby’s, so he shoots him in his pool.
Daisy reconciles with her husband. Only Nick tries to defend Gatsby’s name and arranges his funeral but nobody
comes. Nick ends his relationship with Jordan and moves back to the Midwest. He reflects that just as Gatsby’s
dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of happiness and individualism is over.
 Characters

Jay Gatsby is presented as a mysterious character, since he seldom takes part in the lavish parties he organises. Rich
and attractive, with some secret hidden in his past, he has the stature of a romantic hero who dies for his dream; but
he also embodies the self-made man who tries to recreate the past through the power of money and is destroyed in
the end. Fitzgerald expresses the idea that the ‘American dream’ has been corrupted by the desire for materialism.
We see that Gatsby had a pure dream, but became corrupt in his quest to achieve it. Nick Carraway is both an
observer and a participant in the novel. Educated at Yale, he is the only character to show and hold on to a sense of
morals and decency. Nick can be seen as representing the outsider that Fitzgerald felt himself to be. Both Fitzgerald
and Carraway find themselves surrounded by high society and dishonest people, and neither of them fits in with that
kind of lifestyle. Nick is also linked to one of the major themes in the novel: the contrast between East and West. He
comes from the West, and returns to it at the end of the novel. Through Carraway, Fitzgerald shows his fondness for
the West, which he idealised as being more moral than the East. Tom Buchanan comes from a very wealthy
midwestern family and is Gatsby’s rival for Daisy’s love. He is unfaithful, arrogant and aggressive. Daisy is thrilling
and cool in her white dress with her white house. She represents the enchanted object of desire, the great American
dream, she is the light attracting Gatsby to her. She is very moody, theatrical and impulsive. She seems to enjoy
staging provocative little scenes without expecting any negative consequences. She is characterised by meanness of
spirit, carelessness and absence of loyalty. Thus the tragedy of the novel lies in the fact that Gatsby’s dream is
founded on a terrible misunderstanding of her inner character and worth.

Style
Nick Carraway is the narrator from whose point of view all the events and characters of the story are presented. Nick
is a retrospective narrator who, after going through an experience, looks back on it with a better understanding.
Fitzgerald rejects chronological order and uses the fragmentation of time and frequent flashbacks to represent the
inner world of his characters and to show the way knowledge is normally acquired in real life. Gatsby’s personality,
therefore, is not developed through explicit statement but rather through implication, in the footsteps of Nick’s own
experience. Fitzgerald’s style is characterised by frequent appeals to the senses, by the suggestive use of colours,
and poetic devices such as repetition, simile and metaphor. The language also blends realism and symbolism.
 Symbolic Images

The description of the society of the Jazz Age is extremely detailed and it is scattered with symbolic images, like the
car, which stands for the destructive power of modern society and money. The most impressive description is
perhaps that of ‘the valley of ashes’, a stretch of land full of rubbish, waste and ashes, lying between the city and the
suburbs where Gatsby lives. It stands for the emotional and spiritual sterility which is a counterpart to the bright
lights of the modern metropolis. Gatsby’s house too is at the same time real and symbolic: carefully described in its
various rooms and acres of garden, it celebrates the protagonist’s luck and success during the parties, but embodies
his melancholy and loneliness when it is empty. The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock at East Egg is the symbol of
Gatsby’s hopes and dreams. It represents the gap between the past and the present, the physical and emotional
distance between Gatsby and Daisy, but it is also generally associated with the American dream. Blindness is another
central image: most of the characters in the novel do not wish to see. They seek out blindness in the form of
drunkenness, like Daisy and the guests at Gatsby’s parties; Jordan, Daisy, Tom and many others drive carelessly; they
remain blind to danger, so caught up are they with the selfish pursuit of pleasure. Only Nick truly sees. He is
Fitzgerald’s spokesman in his representation of the decay of his generation.