The Great Gatsby

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Publisher: Scribner

Page Count: 218

In the first chapter, we are introduced to Nick Carraway, the “honest” narrator. He is visiting his cousin, Daisy, and her aristocratic husband, Tom Buchanan. An island away, lives his neighbour, Jay Gatsby, a millionaire famous for his weekly parties. Upon gaining Gatsby’s friendship, Nick ends up as an observer in the bubble of the rich and blameless.

For Gatsby to win over Daisy, he didn’t have to be rich, he had to be born rich. Self-made millionaires like him built their fortune through the illegal sale, or manufacture of alcohol. The Prohibition Act enforced in 1920, banned the substance to improve public morality. It created a social distinction where the “new money” millionaires were regarded with contempt by the “old money” elites.

Publishers were reluctant to accept Fitzgerald’s manuscript. Considered morally offensive, reception for the novel was underwhelming. Author, H.L Mencken saw the story as “no more than a glorified anecdote” while playwright, Laurence Stallings “did not think for one moment, in reading this book that ‘here is a great novel’.” Fitzgerald’s response proved prophetic for the ever evolving critical success of his classic. “An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation and the critics of the next.”         

 Modern literary critics think of the Great Gatsby as one of the 'Great American Novels'. It means that the novel is the most accurate embodiment of the American zeitgeist during the time of its writing. 

Fitzgerald's greatest work is an important reminder of America's past. He expressed a cynical sentiment of the values that would come to define the concept of the American Dream. He views the "dream" as an illusion, a utopian ideal that never existed in the first place. It is an opinion that is still resonating loudly among the present society.