1. Essentials
Title: The Great Gatsby
Author: Francis Scott Fitzgerald
First date of publication: 1926

2. Background
Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in Minnesota. In 1913 he went to Princeton, where he became friends with people who would later become good writers, like Edmund Wilson. In 1917 he went into the army, where he started writing. When he was fired from the army, he tried to get his first book published. This took some time, during which he was always in financial problems. Finally he achieved this in 1920. In 1926 his book ‘The Great Gatsby’, the book that most people see as his masterpiece, was published. He spent all his life dealing with financial problems and writing short stories to make some money. Eventually he died in 1940 at the age of 44 on his second heart attack.
At the time he wrote ‘The Great Gatsby’, somewhere around 1925, there were not a lot of thing happening in the world. Therefore I cannot think of any events that may have influenced the book that Fitzgerald wrote. What did come to my attention is that there are some similarities between the main character and Fitzgerald, so he probably used some experiences from his own life to write his book. In the book the main problems are about marriage and love, and his own engagement did not work out so well either the first time.


3. First impression
My first impression after reading the book is that I did not like it so much. When I started reading, I found that the beginning of the book was quite boring. It got better towards he ending, when there were more things happening, but overall it is not a book I would read again sometime.

4. The Story
The main character, Nick Carraway, goes to live in the East. There he meets up again after a long time with his second cousin Daisy and her husband Tom, who he knew in college. Both Daisy and Tom get into affaires with other people. In the end both their partners are killed and they move away together and Nick also moves away again, because he has had enough of all the drama that happened there.

5. Setting
The story takes place at around the same time that it was written, so a few years after the ending of the First World War.
The whole story takes place near the West-Egg and therefore near New York.
The social background of the main character is very different from that of the people around him. He lives in a small house in between two huge mansions and the people that live on East-Egg, like Tom and Daisy, are quite rich as well. The social background of Jay Gatsby is pretty interesting as well. When the story takes place he is very rich, but only because he earned his money in illegal ways, just to try to still win Daisy over, all those years after she left him because he was to poor.

6. Characters
Nick and Mr. Gatsby
I keep calling Nick the main character, although the book is named after Mr. Gatsby. I find it very difficult to determine whether Nick or Mr. Gatsby is the most important person in the book. Nick is the narrator, so he is the one that influences how you think about the other characters and how you look at the things that happen in the book. That is why I still see him as being the main character. He is a sympathetic, young man, the cousin of Daisy and later a sort-of-friend of Jay. He also gets into a relationship with Jordan, a friend of Daisy, but that does not really work out well in the end, probably because of all the things that happen at the end of the story.

Mr. Gatsby is the great mystery man of the story. No one really knows who he is, despite of all the big party’s he throws, where everyone is invited. You gradually get to know more and more about him as the story goes on, until all the secrets about his wealth are told by Tom. He is introduced when Nick hears about him while visiting Daisy and Tom for the first time. Jay has always loved Daisy and after years he finally gets into a relationship her. Then everything goes wrong though; he is killed and Daisy goes back to Tom.

Tom and Daisy
Tom and Daisy have been married for several years, but they do not have a very loving relationship. Tom comes off like a very egoistic and unsympathetic guy, who cheats on his wife all the time. Daisy does not love Tom at all (not any more though, she did so when they were just married) and after a while starts to cheat on him as well with Jay. She as well does not seem like a very nice person.

Jordan
There is not much made clear about Jordan. We know that she is a pretty and nice person and that she likes Nick, but that is about it.

7. Point of view
The story is being told by Nick and is therefore written in first person view. Sometimes Nick talks directly to the reader and interrupts the story for a while. An example for this is something he says after he told about the night Jay Gatsby was killed:
“After two years I remember the rest of that day, and that night and the next day, only as an endless drill of police and photographers and newspaper men in and out of Gatsby’s front door.” (page 155)

8. Style
The overall style is not extremely difficult to read. Sometimes the author uses words I do not know, but the meaning is often easy to guess when you look at the context. The sentences are not too long or just well constructed, so you do not get lost in a long sentence. To do this the author often uses indents:
“I walked out the back way – just as Gatsby had when he had made his nervous circuit of the house half an hour before – and ran for a huge black knotted tree, whose massive leaves made a fabric against the rain.” (page 85)

Sometimes though the author gets a bit poetic and starts to describe things as vague as possible:
“A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about… like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees.” (pages 153-154)
This example obviously does not show the normal way to describe what is happening in a story.

9. Tone
I think the author feels very close to Nick, the narrator, because - like I said earlier) the story seems to contain some elements from the author’s personal experiences. You would think that this would make the story very personal and therefore emotional, but I think the tone of the author misses some emotion, which makes the story less exiting, especially when there are big things happening, like murder. To my opinion there is also a serious lack of humor in this book (so no use of irony or anything), so it is all pretty straightforward.

10. Structure
The book is divided into nine chapters, that all have Roman numerals but no further title.
The dramatic line:
Introduction: Nick tells about his youth, how he moved to the West-Egg and met up with Tm and Daisy.
Initial Incident: Daisy and Jay Gatsby meet at Nicks place and get an affair.
Rising action: Gatsby’s secrets are revealed. Then Daisy and Gatsby run over Myrtle with a car and she dies. Her husband and Tom are both furious.
Climax: Jay Gatsby gets killed.
Falling action: Nick arranges a funeral, but there is almost nobody there.
Conclusion: Nick decides to move back to the Midwest, breaks up with Jordan and straightens things out with Tom.


11. Theme
I think the central message is: Stay true to the person you are with, because only bad things can come from cheating.
Tom and Daisy both cheated on each other and in the end both their partners died. This would not have happened if they really loved each other, would not have cheated or just would have been honest about their feelings to each other. Therefore you should always be only with the person you really love.

12. Title
One of the most important persons in the book was obviously Mr. Gatsby, so it is not so strange that his name is in the title. I think the author added the word ‘Great’ because at first sight he is a successful, mysterious wealthy man. These ‘qualities’ are the type of things people look up to, so they probably thought he was Great.

13. Genre
I think that the book is a combination of a romance- and a psychological novel, because the main subject is romances and the book consists of thoughts about this subject.

14. My own comment
I found the main character not very interesting, because he seems to be just a normal guy that does not have a very interesting view on things. Everything is a bit common about him and that is kind of boring. I do sympathize with him thought, because he gets dragged into all these situations that are the result of other people’s problems and mistakes. He did not really do anything to get in such a mess. That is why I would probably act the same way as he does, because you still want to help a person in trouble.
My look on the book has changed while writing this, because now I am certain that I do not like this book. I will probably remember the part where Tom tells Daisy the truth about Jay Gatsby the best, because to see Gatsby get what he deserved after living a great lie was actually very funny (in a very sadistic way)).



15. Summary
The story begins when Nick tells us about when he was younger. He was in college, then in the army and now he wants to move to the East. He moves to the “West-Egg”, a small island not too far from New York. He moves into a small house that is squeezed in between two huge villas. Then he goes to see his cousin and her husband, Daisy and Tom Buchanan. There is also a friend of Daisy, Jordan, who tells him that Daisy’s and Tom’s marriage is going badly because Tom has an affair with another woman. Later, Nick goes with Tom to pick up this woman, Myrtle, as they go to a party that lasts long into the night.
A few days after Jordan dropped the name of his mysterious neighbour in a conversation, he gets an invitation for one of Mr. Gatsby’s weekly parties. When he goes there, he immediately runs into Jordan and talks with some of the other guests. From them he hears a lot of rumors about Mr. Gatsby, so he decides to go and look for him himself, to get to know him. As soon as he finds him though, Gatsby has to leave again already. Jordan does get to talk to Gatsby, and tells Nick later that Gatsby has a crush on Daisy. They set up a date for them, and Daisy and Jay Gatsby get an affair. Nick and Jordan get a sort-of-relationship as well, but it is quite superficial.
When all of them decide to go out into town one evening, it all goes wrong. Tom reveals that Jay has made his money in illegal ways, and they confront Daisy with the question who she really loves. She still picks Jay. After the fight, Jay and Daisy leave sooner than the rest in the car, but on their way home they accidentally run over Tom’s mistress and she dies. Tom and the mistress’ husband are both furious and Tom thinks Gatsby was driving, while actually Daisy drove the car. Tom tells Myrtle’s husband that Gatsby killed his wife, so the husband goes out and kills Gatsby and after that himself.
Nick organizes a funeral, but there are hardly any guests. Nick and Daisy get back together and move away and finally Nick breaks up with Jordan and moves back to the Midwest as well.