The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby, by the American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, was first published in 1925. The story takes place in New York City and Long Island in the 1920s. It has often been described as the epitome of the "Jazz Age" in American literature.

Summary

Jay Gatsby is a young millionaire with a dubious and somewhat notorious past. He has no ties to the society of the rich in which he circulates, and no one quite knows how he made his fortune. Some believe he is a bootlegger. Rumors circulate of his "killing a man", or being a German spy during the Great War and the possibility of his being a cousin of contemporaneous German ruler Kaiser Wilhelm. However, despite the glamorous parties he throws, with their countless gatecrashers whom he generously tolerates, Gatsby is a lonely man. All he really wants is to "repeat the past" – to be reunited with the love of his life and golden girl, Daisy. That's why he was up to getting rich, not only, that he wouldn't end like his father, a farmer, but also to regain Daisy. But Daisy is now Daisy Buchanan, married to the staid, respectable millionaire Tom Buchanan, and the couple now has a young child. For Gatsby, though, Daisy's new status as mother and wife hardly constitutes an obstacle in conquering his love for her; and Daisy, feeling trapped and bored in her marriage with the unfaithful Tom, is flattered by the return of Gatsby's attention.

Related Topics:
Millionaire - Bootlegger - German - Great War - Cousin - Ruler - Kaiser Wilhelm - Marriage - Unfaithful

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The narrator of the novel is 29 year old Nick Carraway, an apprentice Wall Street trader in the rising financial markets of the early 1920s, who is also Daisy's cousin. Carraway has moved into the small bungalow next to a mansion owned by the millionaire Gatsby (a "factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy"). Eventually, Carraway cynically realizes that the rich, as respectable as they may seem superficially, are indeed "careless people," and Tom and Daisy are no exception. Tom has a mistress, Myrtle, the wife of the gas station owner in the wasteland of ashes between the fabulous mansions on Long Island and New York City, located somewhere around present day Flushing, Queens, New York. Nick meets and quickly makes friends with Gatsby, though, and becomes his liaison with Daisy. One afternoon, after a confrontation between Tom and Gatsby over Daisy, Daisy runs over Myrtle while driving back from the city. Tom misleads Myrtle's heartbroken husband George unintentionally, implying that the accident was Gatsby's fault, and Gatsby is consequently shot by George Wilson. Wilson commits suicide immediately afterward. Hardly anyone, and not even Daisy, comes out to Gatsby's funeral, and Nick, Gatsby's sole remaining friend, must attend it alone, where he meets Gatsby's father, a poor farmer. Gatsby is buried with the same mystery in which he suddenly appeared.

Related Topics:
Narrator - Wall Street - Trader - Financial markets - 1920s - Long Island - New York City - Flushing, Queens - New York - Suicide - Funeral

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