The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published on April 10, 1925, the story is set in Long Island's North Shore and New York City during the summer of 1922.

The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age." Following the shock and chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the "roaring" 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers and led to an increase in organized crime. Although Fitzgerald, like Nick Carraway in his novel, idolized the riches and glamour of the age, he was uncomfortable with the unrestrained materialism and lack of morality that went with it.

Although it was adapted into both a Broadway play and a Hollywood film within a year of publication, it was not popular upon initial printing, selling fewer than 25,000 copies during the remaining fifteen years of Fitzgerald's life. The book was largely forgotten during the Great Depression and World War II. After it was republished in 1945 and 1953, it quickly found a wide readership and is now often regarded as an example of the Great American Novel. The Great Gatsby has since become a standard text in high school and university courses on American literature in countries around the world, and is ranked #2 on the Modern Library's list of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century.

Plot summary

First-person narrator Nick Carraway introduces the novel, insisting that based on advice his wealthy father once gave him he strenuously avoids judging people; however, he admits that this habit often causes him problems, with particular reference to events concerning a man named Gatsby. Nick leaves New York—where these events took place—to return to the Midwest. Toward the end of the novel, Nick says that a year or two has passed since the story took place.

Nick opens his story by recounting that he, a young man from Minnesota, has moved to New York, renting a low-cost cottage located in West Egg, the less fashionable of two fictional seaside communities alongside one another on Long Island Sound (the other one being East Egg). Nick visits his second cousin, Daisy Buchanan, whose husband, Tom, was a football player at Yale and who now is a phenomenally wealthy polo player. The Buchanans have an opulent mansion in East Egg. Here, Nick meets Jordan Baker, a lady friend of Daisy's and well-known golfer.

Nick is the next-door neighbor of Jay Gatsby, an extremely wealthy man known for hosting lavish soirées in his own enormous mansion, where every Saturday, hundreds of people come. Although many of the guests are uninvited, Nick is soon personally invited by a rather formal invitation through one of Gatsby's butlers, and finds himself becoming involved in this party scene, although he claims to despise the entire concept of mindless entertainment.

Gatsby seems to be a mysterious character whose great wealth is a subject of much rumor; none of the guests Nick meets at Gatsby's parties know much about his past. At one point during the party, a man begins a conversation with Nick, as the man claims to recognize Nick from the US Army Third Division in the war. Nick affirms that he was in this Division, and remarks on the strange absence of their host. The man reveals himself to be Gatsby, surprising Nick who had expected Gatsby to be much older and not as personable. In fact, Nick and Gatsby begin a close friendship.

Nick is initially confused as to why Gatsby throws parties without introducing himself to his guests, and even more confused when Gatsby drives him to New York and discloses to Nick, without explaining his motivations for doing so, a seemingly far-fetched version of his upbringing. Nick's female acquaintance Jordan Baker eventually reveals to Nick that Gatsby was holding these parties in hopes that Daisy, his former love, would visit by chance. Also through Jordan, Gatsby requests Nick to arrange a meeting with Daisy. Nick obliges, and the reunion is initially awkward but ultimately successful, and soon Daisy and Gatsby begin an affair. In the meantime, Nick and Jordan Baker, whom Nick re-encounters at one of Gatsby's parties, start a relationship, which Nick already predicts will be superficial.

Eventually, in and leading up to an explosive scene at a hotel in Manhattan, Daisy's husband Tom notices Gatsby's love for Daisy and alleges that Gatsby is a bootlegger, in front of Gatsby, Daisy, Nick, and Jordan. Tom claims that he's been researching Gatsby and expresses his hatred towards Gatsby. In reply Gatsby urges Daisy to tell Tom that she never loved Tom; Gatsby hopes to erase the last five years so that she may simply be with him. Daisy does tell Tom, but hesitantly. Tom sees that he still has a chance with Daisy, and denies her and Gatsby's claim. Tom tells Daisy and Gatsby to drive together from the hotel to Tom and Daisy's house on Long Island; Tom mocks Gatsby by claiming he knows nothing can happen between Daisy and Gatsby. Tom takes his time getting home with Nick and Jordan.

George Wilson, owner of an auto repair garage on a desolate road between Manhattan and northern Long Island, is also arguing with his wife Myrtle (with whom Tom is having an affair). She runs out of the house, only to be hit by Gatsby's car which is being driven by Daisy. Myrtle is killed instantly, and Daisy and Gatsby speed away. Later, as Tom, Jordan, and Nick are on their way home, they notice the car accident. Tom remarks casually that Wilson will finally have some business, but soon realizes that his lover Myrtle is dead. During this grotesque scene, Wilson comes out of his shop, half-insane and half in shock, and rants about having seen a yellow car. Tom leads Wilson into a private place and tells him that the yellow car was not Tom's and that Tom was driving Gatsby's yellow car earlier in the day (when Tom's group was driving to the hotel and stopped by at Wilson's for gasoline). Wilson does not seem to listen, and Tom, Jordan, and Nick leave. Wilson seems to become insane. He stays up all night rocking back and forth, muttering nonsense, while his neighbor patiently watches over him. Wilson thinks he makes the connection that whoever was driving that yellow car must have been the man Myrtle was having an affair with and makes up his mind to find the yellow car.

By this point, over the past several weeks Nick has abandoned his role as an outsider observing Gatsby's life and has instead become Gatsby's close friend. When Nick finds out about the accident, he advises Gatsby to run away for a week. The two end up having breakfast at Gatsby's pool, with Nick telling him, "They're [Daisy, Tom, Jordan] a rotten crowd. You're worth the whole damn bunch put together." Upon hearing this, Gatsby smiles his trademark smile, which Nick described as, "It faced—or seemed to face—the whole world, then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor."

Wilson finds his way to Tom's house with a gun and Tom, while packing for an escape trip with Daisy, names Gatsby as the driver of the yellow car that killed Wilson's wife. In the meantime, Gatsby is floating in his pool, overwhelmed with depression, thinking that Daisy no longer loves him, and hoping for a call from her. There Wilson finds and kills Gatsby. Wilson then commits suicide on Gatsby's lawn not far away.

Nick tries to find people who will attend Gatsby's funeral, only to find that not even Gatsby's crooked business partners will be there to mourn for him (though not because they do not care for him, but because they believe that Gatsby was killed by a rival, and are afraid to be seen at the funeral). Finally, Nick meets Mr. Gatz, Gatsby's father, (Gatsby gave himself a new name after leaving home), who comes to the funeral, apparently still trapped in the past. He shows Nick a well-worn photograph of Gatsby's house and a notebook that Gatsby wrote in as a youth showing his drive and ambition.

Aside from Gatsby's servants, only three people attend his funeral: Nick, Mr. Gatz, and "Owl Eyes," a man who had attended one of Gatsby's parties earlier that summer, but whom Nick hadn't seen since. After severing connections with Jordan, Nick returns permanently to the Midwest, reflecting on Gatsby's desire to recapture the past.

Composition

With Gatsby, Fitzgerald made a conscious departure from the composition process of his previous novels. He began composing the novel in 1923, but ended up discarding most of the false start, though some of it would resurface in the story "Absolution." Unlike his previous works, Fitzgerald intended to heavily edit and reshape Gatsby, believing that it held the potential to launch him toward literary acclaim. He told his editor Max Perkins that the novel was a “consciously artistic achievement," and a "purely creative work—not trashy imaginings as in my stories but the sustained imagination of a sincere and yet radiant world." He added later during the editing process that he felt “an enormous power in me now, more than I've ever had.”^[1]

Along with the editing, which reframed both Daisy and Gatsby’s characters, Fitzgerald also wavered on the title of the novel. Among various titles considered were Among Ashheaps and Millionaires, Gold-Hatted Gatsby, The High-Bouncing Lover, and On the Road to West Egg. Fitzgerald also considered several variations on titles alluding to the Roman character Trimalchio from the Satyricon, and the book was originally titled Trimalchio in West Egg. Weeks before Gatsby was to be published, he wrote Perkins saying that he preferred Trimalchio's Banquet. At the last moment, Fitzgerald also considered the title Under the Red, White and Blue, referring to the book's ties with the American dream and other symbols of America. He then came up with the title The Great Gatsby which he submitted to his publisher. However, he once again changed his mind and wanted to change the title back to Under the Red, White and Blue, but by then it was too late to change. Hence the title remained The Great Gatsby.^[2]

Original cover art

The orginal cover art for The Great Gatsby was commissioned by Scribner's of Francis Cugat (brother to Xavier Cugat). It was completed before the novel, and Fitzgerald said the cover influenced him and was "written into" the novel.

After several initial sketches of various completeness, Cugat decided upon a gouache depicting two reclining nudes forming the irises of a pair of disembodied female eyes hovering above the bright lights of an amusement park. There is no nose but full, voluptuous lips, and descending from the right eye is a green tear. The eyes are reminiscent of those of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg (the once proprietor of a faded commercial billboard near George Wilson's auto-repair shop), while the hue of the tear is similar to the light at the end of Daisy's dock. Extending the theme of lights, the amusement park echoes a common theme of the novel.^[3]

Film, TV, theatrical and literary adaptations

The Great Gatsby has been filmed four times:

1. The Great Gatsby, in 1926 by Herbert Brenon – a silent movie of a stage adaptation, starring Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson, and William Powell. According to the IMDb, no known copies have survived (only a trailer with a few minutes of footage is known to exist);
2. The Great Gatsby, in 1949 by Elliott Nugent – starring Alan Ladd, Betty Field, and Shelley Winters; for copyright reasons, this film is not readily available;
3. The Great Gatsby, in 1974, by Jack Clayton – the most famous screen version, starring Robert Redford in the title role with Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan & Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway, with a script by Francis Ford Coppola;
4. The Great Gatsby, in 2000 by Robert Markowitz – a made-for-TV movie starring Toby Stephens, Paul Rudd and Mira Sorvino.

Famous American author Truman Capote was originally hired as the screenwriter for the 1974 film adaptation. In his screenplay, Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker were both written to be homosexual. After Capote was removed from the project, Coppola rewrote the screenplay.

The 2002 film G (released in 2005) by Christopher Scott Cherot claims inspiration from The Great Gatsby.

Stage

An operatic treatment of the novel was commissioned by the New York Metropolitan Opera to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the debut of James Levine. The opera premiered on December 20, 1999. The music and libretto are by John Harbison with popular song lyrics by Murray Horwitz.

Also, it had been adopted by Takarazuka Revue in 1991, performed by Snow Troupe. It will performed by Moon Troupe of the company in 2008.

The Great Gatsby, a stage adaptation by Owen Davis, was first performed at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City on Feb 2, 1926 in a production directed by George Cukor with James Rennie and Florence Eldridge.

The Great Gatsby, in a new adaptation by Simon Levy, was performed for the opening of the new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July 2006. This was billed as "the first authorized stage version of the novel since 1926."

However, two months earlier, in Brussels, Belgium, The Kunsten Festival des Arts debuted Gatz, a six-hour production by the New York theater company Elevator Repair Service. Set in a ramshackle contemporary office building, Gatz utilized the entire text of Gatsby, at first read by employees at the office building, and eventually acted out by them. "Gatz" premiered in the U.S. on September 21, 2006, at the Walker Art Center (also in Minneapolis) just eleven days after the closing of The Great Gatsby at The Guthrie.

Books

• Ernesto Quiinonez's Bodega Dreams adapted The Great Gatsby to Spanish Harlem
• The Great Gatsby, a graphic novel adaptation by Australian cartoonist Nicki Greenberg
• The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian imagines the later years of Daisy and Tom Buchanan's marriage as a social worker in 2007 investigates the possibility that a deceased elderly homeless person is Daisy's son.

In popular culture

• The Great Gatsby was sometimes read aloud by Andy Kaufman in a faux British accent as a type of anti-humor.
• In South Park episode 403, Timmy 2000, a psychiatrist reads the novel in its entirety to determine whether or not the boys have Attention Deficit Disorder.
• In the Seinfeld episode, The Friars Club, George Costanza references The Gatsby's as having a bunch of people around and they were all best friends.
• Seattle-based rock band Gatsbys American Dream derived their name from an obvious theme in the book.
• The film The Guardian references the Great Gatsby. One character introduces herself as Daisy.
• Businessman Bill Gates has inscribed in his library a sentence from the last page of the novel: "He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it." [1]
• The King of Queens episode "American Idle" uses The Great Gatsby as a running joke as Carrie states in the beginning that she intends to read the book, but by the end of the episode she has clearly not read it. Doug eventually comes to the conclusion that Gatsby must be a magician due to his title.
• German pop-music band Wolfsheim derived their name from one of the novel's characters.
• The episode in the Ken Burns' documentary Baseball, The Faith of Fifty Million People (Inning 3), has the title and a line taken from the novel, referring to its fictional character "Meyer Wolfsheim" (but based on Arnold Rothstein).
• A Peanuts comic featured Sally teaching Bible school, but one of her students answers every question (including "Who hit Goliath in the head with a stone?" and "Who parted the Red Sea?") with the Great Gatsby. Snoopy quotes Nick watching Gatsby and Daisy dance during his nighttime dance with the little red-haired girl.
• The rock band Sullivan titled a song, on their debut full-length album, "Python Under the Watchful Eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg."
• The 2005 film Fever Pitch featured a scene where Ben and Lindsey attend a Great Gatsby party, where everyone is dressed in 1920s attire.
• The band Gatsby Gets The Green Light derived their name from the book.
• The band, Wolfgang Parker, has a song named "Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires", in reference to 'The Great Gatsby'.
• In the 2003 film Fighting Temptations, Cuba Gooding's character Darrin can be seen reading the book on a train back to his hometown of Monte Carlo.
• In the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother Ted throws 3 parties in a row to impress Robin, who is he trying to go out with. Marshall calls Ted Gatsby and tells him that Robin isn't going to show up.
• The road to the tip of the Great Neck peninsula (the model for Fitzgerald's "West Egg"), on the Long Island north shore, is named "Gatsby Lane."
• In an episode of the Japanese drama Hana Yori Dango 2, one of the characters, Rui Hanazawa, is reading a copy of "The Great Gatsby".
• The novel Jake, Reinvented is a modern teenage adaptation of the book, with a nearly-identical plot. In the movie the Guardian in the Bar a character references Daisy and reading The Great Gatsby
• In the Daily Show with Jon Stewart book America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, on one of the last few pages where it shows the "other works" by the Daily Show cast, one of the books shown is "The Great Gatsby, written by Jon Stewart and the Daily Show Cast, as told to F. Scott Fitzgerald."

References

External links

Sources

• The Great Gatsby, from Project Gutenberg Australia, plain text.
• The Great Gatsby online.
• Three Novels (1953). Scanned book from Internet Archive, includes The Great Gatsby.
• Index to The Great Gatsby

Movies

• The Great Gatsby (1926) at the Internet Movie Database
• The Great Gatsby (1949) at the Internet Movie Database
• The Great Gatsby (1974) at the Internet Movie Database
• The Great Gatsby (2000) (TV) at the Internet Movie Database
• G (2002) at the Internet Movie Database

Miscellaneous

• AP: Page Ivey: "Professor, private investigator team up in search of the real 'Great Gatsby'"
• Washington Post - 'Gatsby': The Greatest Of Them All
• Ray C. Fair - "Where did Fitzgerald get the idea of having Clay's Economics reside in Nick Carraway's library?"

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