Author of The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the most renowned authors in American history. He was born in September 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota, and went to Princeton University. However, he did not complete his university education at the institution as he dropped out to join the military during World War I (Ramadani 73).
After the war, the author relocated to New York City to pursue a career in writing. He was among the leading figures in the country in the 1920s, commonly referred to as the Jazz Age. This period was regarded as a time of prosperity and cultural transformation in the United States. Most of his writing explores various themes, but the most notable themes in his books are those of wealth, class, and social status. He reflected on the excesses and contradictions of their generations.
One of his notable novels is The Great Gatsby, which he published in 1925. The novel recounts the story of Jay Gatsby, depicted as a wealthy and enigmatic individual. In the book, Jay is known for throwing lavish parties while hoping to win back his former lover, Daisy Buchanan. This novel has become one of the most sought-after works in American literary studies and is often used in high school and college literature courses.
The author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, also has other novels under his name. For instance, he wrote the novels This Side of Paradise in 1920, Tender is the Night in 1934, and The Beautiful and Damned in 1922 (Ramadani 73). Through literary analysis, it is believed that most of his work explores the experiences and anxieties of the American Lost Generation (Ramadani 73). This term is often used to describe the disoriented and disillusioned young people who grew up during World War I, as well as those who grew up after the war.
Despite his successful career in writing, the author struggled with alcoholism and financial problems throughout his life and passed away in 1940 due to a heart attack at the age of 44. In recent years, his novels have experienced a resurgence in interest and popularity among students and scholars. His writings are still studied and analyzed by various literary scholars worldwide, and he is credited with his exploration of the American Dream.
Analysis of The Great Gatsby
The novel The Great Gatsby was published in 1925 by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The storyline within the novel is based on the events of the 1920s. This period was known for excess and decadence in American society.
The main character in the novel is Jay Gatsby, portrayed as a wealthy and mysterious person. The author uses Jay to portray the theme of love and desire, one of the major themes explored in the novel. Through this theme, he explains to the readers the associated complexities, the consequences of pursuing love and desire in the 1920s, and the corrupt lifestyle of the wealthy.
Gatsby throws lavish parties to win back his former lover, Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby’s former lover is also portrayed as a wealthy socialite. The two met years earlier but lost contact with one another. Being well-connected and wealthy, Gatsby uses his connections and resources to win his lover back. However, the affection between Daisy and Gatsby is ultimately ruined by entrenched corruption and moral decay within the society they both live in.
The central message in the book is the critique of the entrenched corruption and moral decay of the American Dream in the 1920s. The author uses the two central characters, Daisy and Gatsby, to portray the idea of the American Dream (Gökçen 15). The American Dream is a belief that anyone in American society can achieve success and prosperity through hard work and determination. However, Gatsby’s search for wealth and social status results in his downfall and tragic end.
The author also uses the theme of betrayal to portray the relationships that existed in the 1920s between married men and their mistresses. He uses characters like Myrtle Wilson and Tom Buchanan to explore the theme. Myrtle is married to George Wilson, which explains the complexities surrounding marriages in the Jazz Age.
Myrtle represents how people used dubious means to achieve the American Dream by engaging in immoral acts. The author writes that she was dissatisfied with and attracted to Tom’s luxurious lifestyle. She viewed it as an opportunity to attain the American Dream. However, their relationship ended in tragedy when she died.
Throughout the novel, the author uses the theme of love, desire, and betrayal to portray how the Jazz Age consisted of wealthy people who did not care about the morality of society. He also uses this theme to explain to the readers how empty the American Dream was at the time. He uses the characters in the novel to explain how the generation at the time would use manipulation and betrayal of others to achieve their American Dream. However, he depicts the character’s pursuit of the American Dream as leading to destruction and despair.
In his novel, the author also critiques the extremes and shallowness of the generation of the Jazz Age. This generation of American society was characterized by its sharp focus on material wealth and social status. The author portrays the lives of the wealthy people at the time as shallow and meaningless through wealthy characters in his novel. He suggests their quest for pleasure and luxury is eventually hollow and unsatisfactory.
The novel, at the same time, explores the theme of longing and love. The author argues that genuine human connection and emotional fulfilment are eventually more important than gaining wealth and social status. As a character in the novel, Daisy represents the unachievable love object. Their relationship with Gatsby signifies the desire and disappointment many people of the Jazz Age experienced (Gökçen 17). The author also uses characters such as Daisy, who are complex and flawed, to portray the tension and contradictions of the Jazz Age.
The book, The Great Gatsby, has been widely acknowledged for its mastery of storytelling and precise portrayal of the extremes and contradictions surrounding the Jazz Age. However, the author’s work, The Great Gatsby, has also been criticized. Some of the book’s critics argue that F. Scott Fitzgerald was more preoccupied with the lives of the wealthy and failed to give voice to the working class and the minority people who were also part of the Jazz Age (Gross 168).
Other critics of the book also criticize how the author portrays women in the book. They argue that women as characters in the book are objectified and marginalized. Despite the criticism surrounding the book, The Great Gatsby remains one of American literature’s most influential and beloved works. Some of its themes and imagery of the events that occurred in the Jazz Age, as portrayed by the author, remain clear and resonate with readers today.
The Theme of Justice and Its Significance
While the theme of justice is not fundamental in the book, The Great Gatsby, it plays a significant role in the novel. The theme of justice is often compared to the ideas of privilege and unequal distribution of wealth in society. The author’s characters used in the novel are defined based on their wealth, which gives them social status, and their ability to manipulate the justice system to fit their needs.
For example, the theme of justice is portrayed by the confrontation between Gatsby and Tom about the mistreatment of Daisy. Tom manages to escape with his extramarital affairs without any consequences. Gatsby tells Tom, “Your wife doesn’t love you, and she’s never loved you. She loves me.” (Gross 170). Gatsby believes justice will only be served through this confrontation if he can be with Daisy.
Another instance where the theme of justice is portrayed is the reflection of Nick in chapter 8 of the book, where he says that he could not forgive or, like Gatsby, his involvement in illegal deals to accumulate wealth and everything he has done, which was entirely to himself (Gross 162). The reflection by Nick highlights the moral opacity of justice and explains that justice is subjective.
Through the novel, the author implies that justice is not always equally served, as the mighty people who are privileged in society evade punishment for their actions. In the novel, Tom Buchanan is one of the characters portrayed as wealthy and powerful by the author. Tom uses his connections to protect himself from legal persecution.
In the novel, the theme of justice is portrayed when Tom takes Nick to meet his mistress, Myrtle. They both end up at a party in a small apartment in New York that Tom rented secretly for her mistress. Myrtle invites her sister and neighbor, and they both get drunk (Shroff 34). Tom, Nick, and Myrtle are involved in a car accident while Tom is driving. After the accident, Myrtle, who is badly injured, dies, but Tom manages to escape without legal consequences.
The novel, The Great Gatsby, is vital in the study of American literature due to various reasons. First, the novel is considered a classic work of fiction that has survived for almost a century and has become a cultural touchstone. Another reason the novel is essential to American literature studies is its reflection on the events that occurred in America in the Jazz Age era. The novel provides insight into that generation’s values, attitudes, and beliefs.
Finally, the novel is a work of the heart, and it uses figurative language, symbolism, and characterization that enable the readers to explore complex themes and ideas. In terms of American values, the author portrays both the negative and positive sides of the American Dream. He uses characters like Jay Gatsby to portray that anyone can achieve prosperity and success in America through hard work and determination. The author uses various characters to portray both sides of the American Dream. For example, he uses Tom to represent the negative side of the American Dream, which is often characterized by corruption and moral decay.
Annotated Bibliography
Gökçen, K. A. R. A. “Disillusionment and American Dream in Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.” iyyjp. yeniyuzyil. Edu, vol.1 no.1, pp.12-17. Web.
This article is important as it examines the disillusionment and the American Dream as portrayed by the author. Gökçen argues that The Great Gatsby critiques the idea of the American Dream as a false promise of success and happiness and explores the disillusionment and moral degradation that resulted from pursuing the American Dream. Therefore, this source is very useful to the essay as it will enable us to understand to what extent the generation of the Jazz Age contributed to the moral decay of society in pursuit of the American Dream.
Gross, Andrew S. “10. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925).” Handbook of the American Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, 2017, pp. 162–176. Web.
The author provides an overview of the novel, which includes the novel’s cultural and historical context. He also provides the book’s themes and its reception by the readers and critics. This work is important in our essay as it will enable us to analyze the author’s themes and explore how critics view the author’s ideas.
Ramadani, Fatmir. “Representative Symbols of the American Society: Revisiting F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Selected Novels.” Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, vol. 7.2, 2021, pp. 73–83. Web.
This article explores different sources used in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work, with a significant focus on The Great Gatsby and The Side of Paradise. The article’s author analyzes the significance of these two novels to analyze the society during the Jazz Age. The author analyzes the various uses of symbols such as the green light, the valley of ashes, and the billboard eye and argues that they represent the moral decay, emptiness, and corruption during the era. This article is important in helping us understand the theme of justice and how it was undermined during the 1920s.
Shroff, Darshana. “Queering The Great Gatsby: The Politics of Gender and Sexuality in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Novels.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol. 51, no. 3, 2018, pp.33–50. Web.
The author of this article examines the representation of gender and sexuality in the novel and other novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This article is equally important to our essay as it enables us to examine the gender roles in the Jazz Age generation.