What Makes The Great Gatsby Great

What makes “The Great Gatsby” so “Great”? Is it the charm the protagonist displays in his efforts to impress his love? Is it the vivid descriptions of the ostentatious ways the wealthy live? Perhaps one of the biggest lures for this novel is the representation of Jazz era America it paints. F. Scott Fitzgerald paints a vivid and eloquent, if somewhat dark, picture of the Jazz Age and the American dream that resonates in one's soul.

The novel adheres to the theme of the Jazz Era. The Jazz Era was a time of opulence and wealth where people wore extravagant cloths and threw lavish parties, such as the ones Gatsby threw in the novel. It was also an era of rebellion, the prohibition had started and certain industrious and less scrupulous people made fortunes in “Bootleg” liquor
This is reflected in the novel by how Gatsby made his fortune, as it turns out his main business was bootlegging and other shady deals. It seemed to be a magical time where the extravagant was the ordinary, the mundane was the exciting. This wealth had lead to Gatsby conjuring rather unbelievable illusions about his person, such as reinventing an entirely new persona for himself. Gatsby was originally known as James Gatz. He met Daisy, his love interest for the entire novel, while serving in the military in WWI. Knowing she would never want him as a penniless soldier he lied and said he had a great deal of money, thus beginning the illusion of his reincarnation, Jay Gatsby. This lie drove Gatsby to improve himself and his life and strive for the wealth and splendor he displays in the novel. Amy Henderson, a writer for the Smithsonian states “Gatsby sees money as the means to fulfilling his “incorruptible dream.” When Nick tells him, “You can’t repeat the past,” Gatsby is incredulous: “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can.”(Smithsonian) Fitzgerald himself stated that Gatsby's illusions were “the whole burden of this novel—the loss of those illusions that give such color to the