• Born September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota
• His mother inherited a small fortune and sent Fitzgerald to Newman Prep School in
New Jersey.
• Later attended Princeton University, then dropped out to enlist in the Army
• Wrote The Romantic Egotist in the weeks before reporting to duty
• Stationed outside of Montgomery, Alabama where he fell in love with Zelda Sayre.
• Never deployed- moved to New York for his career and married Zelda.
• This Side of Paradise launched his career and he became one of America’s most promising young writers.
• Famous for short stories such as "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "The Camel's Back" and "The Last of the Belles.“
• 1922- 2 nd Novel-- The Beautiful and Damned
• 1924- moved to France and wrote The Great Gatsby
• 1934- 4 th and final novel- Tender is the Night
• Died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940, at the age of 44

• Fitzgerald used long, ornate sentences.
• Very fast-paced.
• Narrated by Nick Carraway
• “If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away.”

• The story is set in 1920’s New York and Long
Island, more specifically East Egg and West
Egg.
• East Egg and West Egg are actually Great
Neck and Port Washington Peninsulas on
Long Island.
• Valley of the Ashes
• NYC
• Gatsby’s Mansion
• The Buchanan’s

• Peripheral narrator
• Fought in WWI
• Grew up in family of "prominent, well-todo people" in Chicago
• Gatsby’s neighbor
• Daisy’s cousin
• Went to Yale with Tom Buchanan
• Well-rounded, honest man
• Lives on West Egg

• Real name- James Gatz
• Fought in WWI
• Driven as a child– but started to reinvent himself after meeting Dan Cody
• Self-made millionaire driven by his love for Daisy Buchanan
• Throws enormous, extravagant parties in hopes that she will attend
• Nick Carraway says that Gatsby is the only real person in a crowd of fakes
• "better than the whole damn bunch put together"

• “old money”
• Golden girl
• In love with Gatsby
• Unhappily married to Tom Buchanan
• Voice that’s "full of money”
• Careless, indecisive

• Went to Yale with Nick Carraway
• “sturdy, straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face, and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward … you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.”
• Myrtle Wilson’s abusive lover
• Extremely rich- “old money”
• Mansion on East Egg

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• Live in “The Valley of Ashes”
• Low-class
• Myrtle
• Tom’s mistress
• Not very intelligent
• Not beautiful, dominant
• Mid-30’s
• George
• Garage owner
• Submissive, worn out
• Poor
• Vengeful

• Uncut pages represent Gatsby’s fraud.
• The Owl-eyed man represents wisdom and the truth about Gatsby- he found the uncut pages.
• The Green Light represents an unattainable dream.
• The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg looking over the Valley of Ashes represent God looking down on American Society as a moral wasteland. The only character who refers to the eyes on the billboard as the eyes of God is George Wilson. The Valley of
Ashes represents the moral and social decay that occurs as a result of the pursuing wealth and pleasure.

• Nick Carraway and Gatsby
• Only one actually invited to Gatsby’s party
• Tom Buchanan and Gastby
• Assumes that it was Gatsby behind the wheel when Myrtle was killed, when in reality, it was Daisy, Tom’s husband.
• Gatsby’s death
• “"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember the advantages that you've had..." In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments. ”

• “The wind had blown off, leaving a loud bright night with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight and turning my head to watch it I saw that I was not alone…”
• “He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher– shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.”

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• “"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember the advantages that you've had..." In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments. ”
• “He was content to be alone--he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and as far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward--and distinguished nothing except a single green light" ”
• “The modesty of the demand shook me. He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths--so that he could come over some afternoon to a stranger's garden.”
• “And I hope she'll be a fool – that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool. ”