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The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published on April 10, 1925, the story is set in New York City and Long Island during the summer of 1922. The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age". Following the shock and chaos of the First World War, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers and encouraged organized crime. Although Fitzgerald, like Nick Carraway in his novel, idolized the riches and glamour of the age, he was uncomfortable with the unrestrained materialism and lack of morality that went with it. The Great Gatsby was not popular upon initial printing and sold fewer than 24,000 copies during Fitzgerald's lifetime. Although it was adapted into both a Broadway play and a Hollywood film within a year of publication, it was largely forgotten during the Great Depression and World War II. It was republished in 1945 and 1953 and quickly found a wide readership. It is now a standard text in high school and university courses on American literature in countries around the world.
Plot summary Nick Carraway, a New York bond dealer from the Midwest, befriends his neighbor Jay Gatsby, an extremely wealthy young man known for hosting lavish soirées in his Long Island mansion. Gatsby's great wealth is a subject of much rumor; none of the guests whom Nick meets at Gatsby's parties know much about his past. Nick also visits Tom Buchanan, a wealthy athlete and his wife Daisy, who is Nick's removed cousin. Gatsby has a crush on Daisy Buchanan. Daisy then cheats on Tom, to be with Gatsby. Their meeting is at first strained (unnerving Nick), but turns more communicative when Gatsby begins to relax. They see more of each other at Gatsby's house, with Tom occasionally in attendance. The conflict comes to a head in New York City, when Tom confronts Gatsby about the affair that he suspects. It is then that Gatsby claims Daisy will leave Tom and go with him. Daisy declares that she loves Gatsby now but is unable to renounce her love for Tom. Flustered, Daisy departs for Long Island with Gatsby in his car; the rest follow later, in another. By this point, Nick (who placed himself as an outsider early on in the novel) has become both Gatsby's sole ally and best friend. During the middle of the hotel room confrontation, Nick becomes so impressed by Gatsby that he feels the desire to "get up and pat him on the back," saying he has experienced a complete renewal of faith in him. Daisy is driving when Gatsby's car crashes into a woman in a hit and run accident, killing her. The woman was Myrtle Wilson, Tom's lover, who has run out to meet the car, thinking it was Tom coming for her. Myrtle's husband at first believes Tom has killed Myrtle (partly because Mr. Wilson correctly suspects Tom of having hit Myrtle previously), and confronts Tom, who directs him to Gatsby's car. Mr. Wilson tracks the car to Gatsby's house and shoots Gatsby to death, then kills himself. Daisy allows Tom to continue to believe it was Gatsby at the wheel when Myrtle was killed in the hit and run. None of the legions who attended his parties come to Gatsby's funeral; only Nick, Gatsby's father Henry Gatz (Gatsby changed the name in his social-climbing efforts), an unnamed man known for his "owl" eyes whom Nick met in Gatsby's library, and Gatsby's servants, pay their respects. Nick later describes Tom and Daisy as rich people who leave it to others to clean up their messes. Nick breaks off his relationship with Jordan (in whom he saw a fundamental dishonesty) and moves back to the Midwest. Title Fitzgerald originally wanted to title the novel Trimalchio in West Egg, after the character Trimalchio in the Satyricon that Gatsby resembles. Of the many other abandoned titles, Fitzgerald briefly considered The High-Bouncing Lover. After The Great Gatsby went to press, Fitzgerald decided to change the title of the novel to Under the Red, White, and Blue. He sent a telegram to his publisher asking whether it was too late to change it. It was. Inspiration The situation of the Great Gatsby, a wealthy man of mystery haunting the society of his lost love, may owe something to Alexandre Dumas, père's The Count of Monte Cristo. The character of Meyer Wolfsheim in the novel is based on Arnold Rothstein, the real-life gambling kingpin suspected to have been behind the fixing of the 1919 World Series. East Egg and West Egg are thinly disguised versions of Sands Point and Great Neck, New York. Gatsby leads those around him to believe that he attended Trinity College, Oxford. He actually attended St. Olaf College for only a few days, "disliking it because he had to support himself with janitor work". St. Olaf is a liberal arts college located in Northfield, Minnesota, a short drive from where Fitzgerald grew up. Early in the book, Tom Buchanan describes to Nick a book he's reading, Rise of the Colored Empire by "this man Goddard." This book is a play on T. Lothrop Stoddard's book, The Rising Tide of Color, printed about 1922. The introduction features a poem attributed to Thomas Parke D'Invilliers, who is actually a character from Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side Of Paradise. Influence Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
Opera An operatic treatment of the novel was commissioned by the New York Metropolitan Opera to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the debut of James Levine. The opera premiered on December 20, 1999. The music and libretto are by John Harbison with popular song lyrics by Murray Horwitz. Play The Great Gatsby, a stage adaptation by Owen Davis, was first performed at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City on Feb 2, 1926 in a production directed by George Cukor with James Rennie and Florence Eldridge. The Great Gatsby, in a new adaptation by Simon Levy, was performed for the opening of the new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July 2006. This was billed as "the first authorized stage version of the novel since 1926." However, two months earlier, in Brussels, Belgium, The Kunsten Festival des Arts debuted Gatz, a six-hour production by the New York theater company Elevator Repair Service. Set in a ramshackle contemporary office building, Gatz utilized the entire text of Gatsby, at first read by employees at the office building, and eventually acted out by them. "Gatz" premiered in the U.S. on September 21, 2006, at the Walker Art Center (also in Minneapolis) just eleven days after the closing of The Great Gatsby at The Guthrie. Young adult novel Gordon Korman's 2003 young-adult novel Jake, Reinvented is a modern-day retelling of the tale set in the social environment of a fictitious F. Scott Fitzgerald High School. Trivia | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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