The Great Gatsby Summary

Introduction

F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel The Great Gatsby is an iconic staple of American literature. Published in 1925, the novel centers around several themes that present a deep look into American society during the 1920s. Wealth inequality was at an all-time high in the United States, and the Roaring Twenties were a period of almost unprecedented material surplus. Because of this, the nation was presented with an entirely new vision of the American Dream.

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald explores the various implications of this new symbol of the American Dream. The novel is set in the 1920s, just as the Jazz Age began to fully take over American culture. The book discusses this phenomenon of the time and showcases many ideals of the Jazz Age such as money, sex, and lookalike allure that dominate the setting of the story. The narrative of the book is rich in symbols and each character represents an idea greater than the person themselves, and their personas intertwine with actuality to form a complex character study. Fitzgerald’s writing craft is also on showcase in the story. Every sentence seems precise and full of descriptive words that almost seem to jump off the page and hold a contrast between the beauty of the language and the harshness of the often unlikable cast. This paper will examine the enchanting writing style of F. Scott Fitzgerald and the inescapable themes that fill the pages of The Great Gatsby, focusing on the symbolic nature of the characters and the iconic green light from across the bay. It will use close analytical reading to display the ways in which The Great Gatsby is not just interesting, but a required text to read to understand the complexities of the novel.

The Themes in the Novel

‘The Great Gatsby’ meticulously juxtaposes themes ranging from the ‘American Dream’ to societal class distinctions. As these themes are explored, readers learn how love can exist as an illusion and symbol of aspiration. During the 1920s, the vast influx of consumer goods was considered a sign of advancements in America. Wealth and success were being flaunted. This division between new and old class, coupled with moral decay, forms the contradictions of success and failure throughout the novel. The ‘American Dream’ ideal versus the depravity of ‘bootlegging’ reflects how abandonment misshapes one’s society. Still, an additional theme in ‘The Great Gatsby’ furthers the disunion of his society. The longing for the past—‘for the lost romantic history’—defines his characters in the present. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,’ says Nick Carraway, ‘remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’ The characters of ‘The Great Gatsby’ all come from places minus the advantages that New York—America’s magnetic hub—offers.

Additionally, wealth and morality seem out of reach via innovation. While Tom Buchanan may know a certain book, he is ultimately scared of what he lacks; patience, fidelity, and delayed gratification are of ultimate value. He admits at the close of the novel the necessity for care, though the majority of his society believes in consuming money. No one in the novel ‘drifts on forever seeking—a little wistfully—for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.’ Jay Gatsby exploits innovation to become rich. Power can furnish him with Daisy, and money with upward—or downward—mobility. Ultimately, these themes represent a complex society recorded in the 1920s. Fitzgerald's masterpiece critiques American society inside the ‘achieved myth of the uninhibited state.’ Renowned titles such as 'The Great Gatsby' are worthwhile not simply because they are filled with symbolism, metaphor, and irony but also because it is through their symbolism and literary style that they paint a picture of deep and abiding dilemmas—either in the characters of the novel or in society as a whole.

Symbolism and Imagery

One of the uncanny aspects of The Great Gatsby is the way in which symbols and imagery are worked with. To be more precise, the novel presents an abundance of symbols, the most significant ones being the mysterious green light at the end of Daisy's dock, the desolate valley of ashes, and the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, consisting of enormous, albeit unseeing, blue irises. Each of these symbols is closely related to the characters and the world in which they move. It is also worth noting that the contrast between gold, standing for wealth and prosperity, and grey, often tied to vacuity and corruption, looms large in The Great Gatsby.

The imagery deepens the thematic issues that interest us. For example, the green light marks the end of the Buchanans' property. It is not only a matter of distance, since Gatsby can see it from his mansion as well, albeit in a different light: next to Nick's neighbor, it seems to lose all its grace and significance, and it is no coincidence that Nick is almost obsessed with it. Anyhow, the light is intriguing for both Gatsby and Nick. In Daisy's eyes, it is a light that gives hope, a paradise in the background where everything is possible if only a person truly wishes for it. The light invites Gatsby; it enchants him because it more or less spells out his own dream, and Nick becomes interested in it, thus trying to understand who and what the green light is. In a similar way, the characters' symbols also reflect features of the world they live in.

Character Analysis and Development

Character development is economic, psychological, and moral in The Great Gatsby; in this chapter, it is first discussed solely as the first of these three. The novel is remarkable, among other things, for its extremely high number of major characters, five in all, and on at least three other scores, the presentation of character gives the reader pause. The author seems penny-stingy with his treatment of his main characters, as if he had plotted the novel carefully enough ahead of time to have made further development both supererogatory and embarrassing. A kind of tight-lipped, workmanlike prose, nearly as wooden as another author's, forms the background against which characters who are themselves for the moment somewhat threadbare engage in activities nearly as threadbare. Given this use of character as another economic element in the novel, to be finished out without wearying the reader, the rapid insertion of brilliance into characters' speech, action, and thought strikes us as perhaps undeserved, and in any case discontinuous.

The novel is morally serious, and on this score too, the characters trouble us. The immoral goings-on in the novel are reduced alliances of villainous principles to a mechanical formulation on the part of characters to whom no other occupation has occurred. They are not truly characters in the sense of being defined by sets of truly personal habits, tastes, capacities, and inclinations; rather, they seem causes, especially in the case of one character, greedily so. On top of this, they are rather like mathematicians who have selected a problem that guarantees that its solution will be discovered to be consistent with their initial beliefs. One character is served up so readily to both this moral and mathematical hatchet as to make his character seem negligible. But if there is any novel passage which it is neither slight nor controversial to emphasize, it seems to be a passage which insists upon the consistency of the author's treatment of this character, a passage which yields, moreover, the specific terms in which consistency of treatment is demanded. This character emerges from the social circumstances of his generation in America more truly, the novel asserts, than from the screwings and lashings administered to him. Here again, character enters, and the entry indicates a given of social, not personal, life. For it is, as the passage we have in mind suggests, central to one of the main thematic thrusts of the novel. The passage we have in mind is the celebrated final sentence of chapter 6 in which we are told a 'melancholy meditation' led one character to choose a name when he decided, a month later, that his destiny lay to the West.

Conclusion and Reflections on the Novel

This section was created to encompass the ideas and themes of the text.

It has been stated that greed and ambition wrapped up the American Dream and all of the beauty that surrounded it. In a sense, Gatsby never could let Daisy go, and when she seemed to let him back into her life, Gatsby believed that he could relive the past and make Daisy his again. In that hope, it was said that Gatsby believes in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further… 'And one fine morning –' would he pull out any more casually from the past that trunk of lovely stuff? But there are no trunks in the story, which can matter; they are only used to symbolize the lost bond of love. Today, the novel has not lost its impact on American society or the world. It can be seen in the ambitions of people today and in their own ambitions and the work that they are doing in order to obtain their wildest and most passionate dreams. Additionally, one could say that there are many of us today that live our lives in the ambition of our inner child. In all of us, desire can cause us to make some very reasonable and unreasonable decisions in the outcome. Consequently, the moral of this story can be considered individual and emotional. Lust, money, and the dark side of human emotion can have tragic aftermath, or it can be a way to sacrifice for love. For instance, Tom, in his ambition and desire like Gatsby, marries Myrtle and becomes entwined with the drug underworld. Daisy, also in her ambition, marries Tom for his fame and money but gains Gatsby’s wealth. Every character in the story has had a desire and ambition that has been so defining that they frequently made life-altering choices according to the fulfillment of their dreams. It is both frightening and compelling to think about the impact that dreams and desire have on the lives of people in the past and in the future.

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