New Paradigms in the Study of The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Jazz Age that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream.
Fitzgerald, inspired by the parties he had attended while visiting Long Island's north shore, began planning the novel in 1923 desiring to produce, in his words, "something new—something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned." Progress was slow with Fitzgerald completing his first draft following a move to the French Riviera in 1924. His editor, Maxwell Perkins, felt the book was too vague and convinced the author to revise over the next winter. Fitzgerald was ambivalent about the book's title, at various times wishing to re-title the novel Trimalchio in West Egg.
First published by Scribner's in April 1925, The Great Gatsby received mixed reviews and sold poorly; in its first year, the book sold only 20,000 copies. Fitzgerald died in 1940, believing himself to be a failure and his work forgotten. His work, spearheaded by The Great Gatsby, experienced a revival during World War II, and the novel became a part of American high school curricula in the following decades. The book has remained popular since, leading to numerous stage and film adaptations. The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be a literary classic and a contender for the title "Great American Novel". The book is consistently ranked among the greatest works of American literature.
Historical context
Set in the prosperous Long Island of 1922, The Great Gatsby provides a critical social history of America during the Roaring Twenties within its narrative. That era, known for unprecedented economic prosperity, the evolution of jazz music, flapper culture, and bootlegging and other criminal activity, is plausibly depicted in Fitzgerald's novel. Fitzgerald utilizes these societal developments of the 1920s to build Gatsby's stories from simple details like automobiles to broader themes like Fitzgerald's discreet allusions to the organized crime culture which was the source of Gatsby's fortune. Fitzgerald educates his readers about the garish society of the Roaring Twenties by placing a timeless, relatable plotline within the historical context of the era.
Fitzgerald's visits to Long Island's north shore and his experience attending parties at mansions inspired The Great Gatsby's setting. Today there are a number of theories as to which mansion was the inspiration for the book. One possibility is Land's End, a notable Gold Coast Mansion where Fitzgerald may have attended a party.
Plot summary
The main events of the novel take place in the summer of 1922. Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate and World veteran from the Midwest — who serves as the novel's narrator — takes a job in New York as a bond salesman. He rents a small house on Long Island, in the village of West Egg, next door to the lavish mansion of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire who holds extravagant parties. Nick drives around the bay to East Egg for dinner at the home of his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, a college acquaintance of Nick's. They introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, an attractive, cynical young golfer with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. She reveals to Nick that Tom has a mistress, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the "valley of ashes": an industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle to an apartment they keep for their affair. At the apartment, a vulgar and bizarre party ends with Tom breaking Myrtle's nose after she taunts Tom about Daisy.
As the summer progresses, Nick eventually receives an invitation to one of Gatsby's parties. Nick encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself, an aloof and surprisingly young man who recognizes Nick from their same division in the war. Through Jordan, Nick later learns that Gatsby knew Daisy from a romantic encounter in 1917 and is deeply in love with her. He spends many nights staring at the green light at the end of her dock, across the bay from his mansion, hoping to one day rekindle their lost romance. Gatsby's extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are an attempt to impress Daisy in the hopes that she will one day appear again at Gatsby's doorstep. Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection. They begin an affair and, after a short time, Tom grows increasingly suspicious of his wife's relationship with Gatsby. At a luncheon at the Buchanans' house, Gatsby stares at Daisy with such undisguised passion that Tom realizes Gatsby is in love with her. Though Tom is himself involved in an extramarital affair, he is outraged by his wife's infidelity. He forces the group to drive into New York City, where he confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom asserts that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand. In addition to that, he announces to his wife that Gatsby is a criminal whose fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy realizes that her allegiance is to Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt him.
When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes, however, they discover that Gatsby's car has struck and killed Myrtle, Tom's lover. Nick later learns from Gatsby that Daisy was driving the car at the time of the accident, but that Gatsby intends to take the blame. The next day, Tom tells Myrtle's husband, George, that Gatsby was the driver of the car. George, who has leapt to the conclusion that the driver of the car that killed Myrtle must have been her lover, tracks Gatsby to his mansion and fatally shoots both Gatsby and then himself. Nick then stages an upsettingly small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan, and moves back to the Midwest disillusioned with the Eastern lifestyle.
Major characters
Nicholas "Nick" Carraway — a Yale graduate originating from the Midwest, a World veteran, and, at the start of the plot, a newly arrived resident of West Egg, who is aged 29 . He also serves as the first-person narrator of the novel. He is Gatsby's next-door neighbor and a bond salesman. He is easy-going, occasionally sarcastic, and somewhat optimistic, although this latter quality fades as the novel progresses.
Jay Gatsby — a young, mysterious millionaire with shady business connections, originally from North Dakota. He is obsessed with Daisy Buchanan, whom he had met when he was a young officer stationed in the South during World . The character is based on the bootlegger and former World officer Max Gerlach, according to Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, Matthew J. Bruccoli's biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Gatsby is said to have briefly studied at Trinity College, Oxford in England after the end of World .
Daisy Buchanan — an attractive and effervescent, if shallow and self-absorbed, young woman, identified as a flapper. She is Nick's second cousin, once removed; and the wife of Tom Buchanan. Daisy is believed to have been inspired by Fitzgerald's own youthful romances with Ginevra King. Daisy once had a romantic relationship with Gatsby, before she married Tom. Her choice between Gatsby and Tom is one of the central conflicts in the novel.
Thomas "Tom" Buchanan — a millionaire who lives on East Egg, and Daisy's husband. Tom is an imposing man of muscular build with a "husky tenor" voice and arrogant demeanor, a former football star at Yale. Buchanan has parallels with William Mitchell, the Chicagoan who married Ginevra King. Buchanan and Mitchell were both Chicagoans with an interest in polo. Like Ginevra's father, whom Fitzgerald resented, Buchanan attended Yale and is a white supremacist.
Jordan Baker — Daisy Buchanan's long-time friend with "autumn-leaf yellow" hair, a firm athletic body, and an aloof attitude. She is Nick Carraway's girlfriend for most of the novel and an amateur golfer with a slightly shady reputation and a penchant for untruthfulness. Fitzgerald told Maxwell Perkins that Jordan was based on the golfer Edith Cummings, a friend of Ginevra King.
George B. Wilson — a mechanic and owner of a garage. He is disliked by both Tom Buchanan and his own wife, Myrtle Wilson, who describes him as "so dumb he doesn't know he's alive." When he learns of the death of his wife, he shoots and kills Gatsby, wrongly believing he had been driving the car that killed Myrtle, and then kills himself.
Myrtle Wilson — George's wife, and Tom Buchanan's mistress. Myrtle, who possesses a fierce vitality, is desperate to find refuge from her complacent marriage, but unfortunately this leads to her tragic ending. She is accidentally killed after being hit by a car driven by Daisy, though Gatsby takes the blame for it.
Meyer Wolfshiem — a Jewish friend and mentor of Gatsby's, described as a gambler who fixed the World Series. Wolfshiem appears only twice in the novel, the second time refusing to attend Gatsby's funeral. He is a clear allusion to Arnold Rothstein, a New York crime kingpin who was notoriously blamed for the Black Sox Scandal which tainted the 1919 World Series.
Writing and production
Fitzgerald began planning his third novel in June 1922, The play failed miserably, and Fitzgerald worked that winter on magazine stories struggling to pay his debt caused by the production. The stories were, in his words, "all trash and it nearly broke my heart,"
After the birth of their child, the Fitzgeralds moved to Great Neck, New York, on Long Island, in October 1922; the town was used as the scene for The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald's neighbors in Great Neck included such prominent and newly wealthy New Yorkers as writer Ring Lardner, actor Lew Fields, and comedian Ed Wynn. Several mansions in the area served as inspiration for Gatsby's home, such as Oheka Castle and the now-demolished Beacon Towers.
By mid-1923, Fitzgerald had written 18,000 words for his novel but discarded most of his new story as a false start, some of which resurfaced in the 1924 short story "Absolution".
Work on The Great Gatsby began in earnest in April 1924; Fitzgerald wrote in his ledger, "Out of woods at last and starting novel." and a "purely creative work — not trashy imaginings as in my stories but the sustained imagination of a sincere and yet radiant world." He added later, during editing, that he felt "an enormous power in me now, more than I've ever had." Soon after this burst of inspiration, work slowed while the Fitzgeralds made a move to the French Riviera, where a serious crisis in their personal relationship developed shortly thereafter. Fitzgerald made revisions through the winter after Perkins informed him in a November letter that the character of Gatsby was "somewhat vague" and Gatsby's wealth and business, respectively, needed "the suggestion of an explanation" and should be "adumbrated".
Content after a few rounds of revision, Fitzgerald returned the final batch of revised galleys in the middle of February 1925. Fitzgerald's revisions included an extensive rewriting of Chapter VI and VIII. and $1981.25 upon publication.
Cover art
The cover of the first printing of The Great Gatsby is among the most celebrated pieces of art in American literature. It depicts disembodied eyes and a mouth over a blue skyline, with images of naked women reflected in the irises. A little-known artist named Francis Cugat was commissioned to illustrate the book while Fitzgerald was in the midst of writing it. which Fitzgerald described as "blue and gigantic — their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose." Although this passage has some resemblance to the painting, a closer explanation can be found in the description of Daisy Buchanan as the "girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs."
Title
Fitzgerald had difficulty choosing a title for his novel and entertained many choices before reluctantly choosing The Great Gatsby, a title inspired by Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes. Prior, Fitzgerald shifted between Gatsby; Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires; Trimalchio; On the Road to West Egg; Unlike Gatsby's spectacular parties, Trimalchio participated in the audacious and libidinous orgies he hosted but, according to Tony Tanner's introduction to the Penguin edition, there are subtle similarities between the two.
In November of 1924, Fitzgerald wrote to Perkins that "I have now decided to stick to the title I put on the book ... Trimalchio in West Egg" but was eventually persuaded that the reference was too obscure and that people would not be able to pronounce it. His wife, Zelda, and Perkins both expressed their preference for The Great Gatsby and the next month Fitzgerald agreed. A month before publication, after a final review of the proofs, he asked if it would be possible to re-title it Trimalchio or Gold-Hatted Gatsby but Perkins advised against it. On March 19, 1925, Fitzgerald asked if the book could be renamed Under the Red, White and Blue but it was at that stage too late to change. The Great Gatsby was published on April 10, 1925. Fitzgerald remarked that "the title is only fair, rather bad than good."
Early drafts of the novel entitled Trimalchio: An Early Version of The Great Gatsby have been published. A notable difference between the Trimalchio draft and The Great Gatsby is a less complete failure of Gatsby's dream in Trimalchio. Another difference is that the argument between Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby is more even, although Daisy still returns to Tom.
Themes
Sarah Churchwell sees The Great Gatsby as a "cautionary tale of the decadent downside of the American dream". The story deals with human aspiration to start over again, social politics and its brutality and also betrayal, of one's own ideals and of people. Using elements of irony and tragic ending, it also delves into themes of excesses of the rich, and recklessness of youth. This interpretation asserts that The Great Gatsby captures the American experience because it is a story about change and those who resist it; whether the change comes in the form of a new wave of immigrants, the nouveau riche, or successful minorities, Americans from the 1920s to modern day have plenty of experience with changing economic and social circumstances. As Gillespie states, "While the specific terms of the equation are always changing, it's easy to see echoes of Gatsby's basic conflict between established sources of economic and cultural power and upstarts in virtually all aspects of American society." By October, when the original sale had run its course, the book had sold fewer than 20,000 copies. Similarly, Lillian C. Ford of the Los Angeles Times wrote, " leaves the reader in a mood of chastened wonder," calling the book "a revelation of life" and "a work of art." The New York Post called the book "fascinating … His style fairly scintillates, and with a genuine brilliance; he writes surely and soundly." The New York Herald Tribune was unimpressed, but referred to The Great Gatsby as "purely ephemeral phenomenon, but it contains some of the nicest little touches of contemporary observation you could imagine-so light, so delicate, so sharp …. a literary lemon meringue." In the The Chicago Daily Tribune, H.L. Mencken called the book "in form no more than a glorified anecdote, and not too probable at that," while praising the book's "careful and brilliant finish."
Several writers felt that the novel left much to be desired following Fitzgerald's previous works and promptly criticized him. Harvey Eagleton of The Dallas Morning News believed the novel signaled the end of Fitzgerald's success: "One finishes Great Gatsby with a feeling of regret, not for the fate of the people in the book, but for Mr. Fitzgerald." John McClure of the The Times-Picayune opined that the book was unconvincing, writing, "Even in conception and construction, The Great Gatsby seems a little raw." Ralph Coghlan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch felt the book lacked what made Fitzgerald's earlier novels endearing and called the book "a minor performance … At the moment, its author seems a bit bored and tired and cynical." Ruth Snyder of New York Evening World called the book's style "painfully forced", noting that the editors of the paper were "quite convinced after reading The Great Gatsby that Mr. Fitzgerald is not one of the great American writers of to-day." The reviews struck Fitzgerald as completely missing the point: "All the reviews, even the most enthusiastic, not one had the slightest idea what the book was about." and Gatsby did not have the commercial success of his two previous novels, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned. Although the novel went through two initial printings, some of these copies remained unsold years later. Fitzgerald himself blamed poor sales on the fact that women tended to be the main audience for novels during this time, and Gatsby did not contain an admirable female character. Although 1926 brought Owen Davis's stage adaption and the Paramount-issued silent film version, both of which brought in money for the author, Fitzgerald still felt the novel fell short of the recognition he hoped for and, most importantly, would not propel him to becoming a serious novelist in the public eye. His obituary in The New York Times mentioned Gatsby as evidence of great potential that was never reached. However, a strong appreciation for the book had developed in underground circles; future writers Edward Newhouse and Budd Schulberg were deeply affected by it and John O'Hara showed the book's influence. The republication of Gatsby in Edmund Wilson's edition of The Last Tycoon in 1941 produced an outburst of comment, with the general consensus expressing the sentiment that the book was an enduring work of fiction. 155,000 copies of Gatsby were distributed to soldiers overseas, and it is believed that this publicity ultimately boosted the novel's popularity and sales.
By 1944, full-length articles on Fitzgerald's works were being published, and the following year, "the opinion that Gatsby was merely a period piece had almost entirely disappeared." During the 1950s, the book gradually became part of standard high school curriculum required reading in the United States. In 1951, Arthur Mizener published The Far Side of Paradise, a biography of Fitzgerald.
By 1960, the book was steadily selling 50,000 copies per year, and renewed interest led New York Times editorialist Arthur Mizener to proclaim the novel "a classic of twentieth-century American fiction."
The Great Gatsby, in 1949, by Elliott Nugent – starring Alan Ladd, Betty Field, and Shelley Winters; for copyright reasons, this film is not readily available.
Books
The Great Gatsby, a graphic novel adaptation by Australian cartoonist Nicki Greenberg.
The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian imagines the later years of Daisy and Tom Buchanan's marriage as a social worker in 2007 investigates the possibility that a deceased elderly homeless person is Daisy's son.
Daisy Buchanan's Daughter by Tom Carson is the purported autobiography of Tom and Daisy Buchanan's daughter.
The Graphic Canon Volume 3, a comic adaptation of many works of literature, edited by Russ Kick, which includes an adaptation of The Great Gatsby by American cartoonist Tara Seibel.
Radio
In October 2008, the BBC World Service commissioned and broadcast an abridged 10-part reading of the story, read from the view of Nick Carraway by Trevor White.
In May 2012 BBC Radio 4 broadcast The Great Gatsby, a Classic Serial dramatisation by Robert Forrest.
Theater
The Great Gatsby Musical opened at the Kings Head Theatre, London, on August 7, 2012, to fairly modest critical acclaim. A Ruby In The Dust production, it is adapted by Joe Evans and Linnie Reedman with music and lyrics by Joe Evans, directed by Linnie Reedman, with Matilda Sturridge as Daisy Buchanan. The show returned for the 2013 season in a reworked and recast form, with the assistance of choreographer Lee Proud.
Simon Levy's stage adaptation, the only one authorized and granted exclusive rights by the Fitzgerald Estate, had its world premiere at The Guthrie Theater to commemorate the opening of its new theatre in July 2006, directed by David Esbjornson. It was subsequently produced by Seattle Repertory Theatre. In 2012 a revised/reworked version was produced at Arizona Theatre Company and Grand Theatre in London, Ontario, Canada. The game was released for iPad in 2012.
As a tribute to old NES games, developer Charlie Hoey and editor Pete Smith created an 8-bit-style online game of The Great Gatsby. Ian Crouch of The New Yorker c