The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby is a novel written in 1925 by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is set during the summer of 1922 in and around the city of New York and its suburbs – the East and West Eggs. In the post-war atmosphere of the Roaring Twenties, New York was a city reinventing itself with the advent of modern technology. The car, the electric light and telephone all play a major role in this novel as the modern upper-class American comes to welcome these changes, while the working class man struggles to come to terms with them. All the characters of the novel belong to elite backgrounds and seem to live in a world of their own, far removed from their less privileged fellow citizens. The spirit of the Roaring Twenties, characterised by the widespread popularity of Jazz music, art and ‘high culture’ along with a hitherto unseen dynamism, was brought to a crashing end by the Great Depression of 1929. An era of high-flying, high-spending Americans came back to earth and as Warren G. Harding commented, ‘normalcy returned’¹. Through this novel, Fitzgerald gives us a deeper insight into this world and its hollowness - as the iconic cover suggests, Fitzgerald comes close to passing a grave judgement on this society.

The book is written in first person, narrated by Nick Carraway – a young man from the Midwest who has come to the East to join the ‘bond business’. As he acquaints himself with his cousin Daisy Buchanan and her husband, he also becomes a part of the social circle of his millionaire neighbour, Jay Gatsby, who regularly holds lavish parties and does seemingly no work. The plot thickens when Gatsby reveals feelings for Daisy, who had spurned him years ago because he had no money. Through the varied nature of the many inter-personal relationships in the novel and a series of events, Fitzgerald gives his take on the America of the 1920’s. The novel reaches a climatic end when Daisy is forced to choose between Gatsby and her husband and opts for the latter – Gatsby is killed at the end of the book and the Buchanans casually put the entire affair behind them and move out of New York to restart their life together. As Gatsby is immediately forgotten by the very people who once adored him, Nick reflects sadly on the ruthlessness of society.

The narrative has two main characteristics– Nick’s reticence and the suspense that surrounds the character of Gatsby. While Nick is a central character in the novel, he often seems to view things as a member of the audience would watch a drama unfold before his eyes. He might be physically present but he seems to be mentally withdrawn – almost like he doesn’t fit into the fast life he is now leading. This reticence helps the reader understand New York and its culture as an outsider looking in onto a world where objectivity is very difficult. The character of Jay Gatsby is shrouded in mystery right from the beginning and as his story unravels, we begin to look beyond his affluence into his past. Prohibition in the United States had offered a golden opportunity to bootleggers to make millions and only at the very end, Jay Gatsby is revealed to be a crook that had made his money this way. The mysterious nature of Gatsby’s character puts the reader in two minds as to whether his sympathies should lie with Gatsby or not. His warmth and openness make him very likeable, but Fitzgerald very craftily manipulates the reader’s sentiments so that one is never ready to put his entire weight behind Gatsby. Eventually, Jay Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s example of the corruption of the ideal oft termed as the ‘American Dream’.

The narrative style itself is very rich and poetic – Fitzgerald often borrows from popular music and movies of the time. The language is opulent and the descriptions often have a photographic quality to them. The novel can almost be summarised as a series of vignettes. All of this further serves Fitzgerald’s ultimate purpose of depicting American society as it was – too magnificent, too lavish and too grand to last - almost larger than life itself.

One of the central themes of the novel is the party culture which is an integral part of the lives of ‘high society’ in New York. Through Gatsby’s parties, Fitzgerald brings out the pretentious nature of these parties – every party seems like an elaborate setup for the wealthy to show off their material riches. On a deeper level, there is no place left for anyone original in Fitzgerald’s depiction of American society. The persons themselves are highly stereotyped and while they change from party to party, the author leaves us with the impression that they are themselves irrelevant – it’s their type that he’s telling us about. Fitzgerald makes a mockery of these higher sections of society as he implicitly depicts their superficiality.

In contrast, the ‘valley of ashes’ serves as a counterpoint to the glitz and glamour of upper-class New York. Its dry, barren landscape echoes the emptiness pervading American society at the time. The eyes of T. J. Eckleburg, a recurring symbol in the novel, which overlook this desolate area are representative of a judgement being made on the American society. It reflects Fitzgerald’s belief that the ideal so cherished by Americans as the ‘American Dream’ had been corrupted to a point where it stood solely for superficiality and materialism. Daisy is the character most representative of this – she rejected Gatsby as a young man because he had no money and many years later, her old feelings resurface when she sees the opulence and grandeur of his house – it is as if she is falling in love with Gatsby’s material possessions and not the man himself. One of the most potent symbols of the book is the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. It represents Gatsby’s longing for Daisy – his only aim in life is to get to that green light somehow. Symbolically, however, it takes on a larger meaning – the green light is representative of the ‘American Dream’ and all of America’s hopes and aspirations for the future as they strive towards it.

All in all, the novel is a brilliant critique of 1920’s America, showcasing its shallowness, selfishness and loss of moral values in the rush of consumerism. The Great Gatsby is indeed a truly great post-War, Modernist novel.

References:

1. http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=954 Warren Harding talks about a 'return to normalcy'

-NISHIT JAIN, 2009ME10602