The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Then wear the gold hat if that will move her:
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry, “Lover, gold-hatted,
high-bouncing lover,
I must have you.”
- Thomas Parke D’Invilliers
Key Facts
Genre – Modernist, Jazz Age novel, novel of manners
Time written: 1923 –24
Narrator: Nick Carraway – not only narrates but implies
that he is the book’s author
Point of view: first and third person – some sections
presented objectively and some sections presented with
his own interpretations
Tone: Nick’s attitudes towards Gatsby are ambivalent and
contradictory – at times he seems to disapprove of Gatsby’s
excesses and at other times, he admires Gatsby and describes
him in a nostalgic tone
Tense: past
Setting: Summer 1922
Place: Long Island and New York City
Protagonist: Gatsby and/or Nick
Characters
Nick Carraway: narrator and moral arbiter of The Great Gatsby
Tom Buchanan: represents brutality and the moral carelessness of the
established rich
Daisy Fay Buchanan: Nick’s distant cousin and Tom’s wife. She is the
“golden girl” who has become the incarnation of Gatsby’s dream
Jordan Baker: an attractive woman golfer who becomes involved with
the narrator and who is given to compulsive lying
Jay Gatsby: a racketeer and a romantic idealist, he devotes his life to
amassing the wealth he thinks he need to win Daisy and thereby make his
dream come true
George Wilson: the proprietor of a shabby garage in the Valley
of Ashes.
Myrtle Wilson: a woman of ludicrous ostentation, whose
“animal vitality” attracts Tom
Owl-Eyes: A stout, middle-aged man who attends Gatsby’s
parties
Meyer Wolfsheim: The Jewish gambler and racketeer who is
Gatsby’s business associate
Symbols
The Valley of Ashes and ashes – the modern world
The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock
East Egg and West Egg
The parties
The careers of the main characters
The eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg – God
The automobile – an ideal based on materialism is ultimately
destructive
Themes
The decline of the American Dream
The spirit of the 1920s
The difference between social classes
The role of symbols in the human search for
meaning
The role of the past in dreams of the future
Motifs:
The connection between events and weather
The connection between geographical location and social
values
Images of time
Extravagant parties
The quest for wealth