The story is told from a first person flashback perspective. The narrator, Nick Carraway, is a man from the Midwest recalling his experience one summer with a man named Gatsby. He tells the story chronological order, and since Nick is not much of an active character, that changes the structure of the work to resemble third person limited. Nick is there without really being an active participant. He is a vessel through which the reader looks, rather than what the reader is looking at.
The Great Gatsby is about the American dream. More than that though, it’s about the failure of the American dream. No one would have wanted to read a novel about peace and prosperity. Utopias are very dull. Novels where in the protagonist triumphs over all the challenges thrown his way were common place. Fitzgerald said himself in 1922, “I want to write something new - something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned.” (vii) Whether he accomplished that or not is debatable.
No one in the novel truly reaches their dreams. Gatsby has success but not love. Daisy has love in the form of Tom, but that is abusive. Tom has everything he wants, but seemed to hate the whole world anyway. Nick has nothing of real value and is mediocre in every way. Myrtle and George have nothing. All of the other characters in the book are too underdeveloped to determine what their aspirations are.
Another thing to consider is that the immoral people have all the money. Money symbolizes evil. The rich and evil New Yorkers hate the humble and good. Not that being poor automatically makes a person good, as Myrtle and George show, but it is rather about greed and generosity. The greedy are naturally richer than the generous. Nick moves to the New York area in order to make money; this indicates that he is falling from virtue. When he leaves New York at the end of the novel, that means that he has been repulsed by the hatred and perverted love found in New York.
F. Scott Fitzgerald used a large amount of symbolism in this novel. That is not unusual, as any novel that takes three years to write is bound to be full of hidden meaning. By contrast, Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury took seven days, and it has no deep meaning whatsoever. Some of the major themes and that of sin and wealth, heaven and hell.
Each one of the major characters has one corresponding capital vice. Gatsby has greed, Daisy has pride, Tom has wrath, Myrtle has lust, and George has envy. Using Dante’s views on this, that would place Daisy closest to Heaven and Myrtle closest to Hell. Nick, on the other hand, is just a cameraman. He is a very underdeveloped and unimportant character.
To read between the lines a bit, and relate this work to Dante’s Divine Comedy, New York is Hell. That would make the East and West eggs purgatory and the Midwest Heaven. We can see this in Dr. T. J. Eckleburg’s sign. The eyes over the valley of ashes represent God. However, “[He] sank down himself in eternal blindness . . . and moved away.” (28) This indicates that God has left the sinners halfway on the road to Hell. The owl-eyed man who attends Gatsby’s party and then his funeral may also be thought of as God. First in the library, where he is judging Gatsby, and says, ”It’s a bona fide piece of printed material. It fooled me. This fella’s a regular Bellasco.” This means that God thinks that Gatsby is unworthy of Heaven because he is vain. Then at the funeral, he called Gatsby a “poor son-of-a-bitch” (183) This is God’s final ruling about Gatsby.
F. Scott Fitzgerald took three years to write The Great Gatsby. It was, for him, the culmination of everything he had ever done. It is in many ways a reflection on his life. Nick, Gatsby, and Tom are the trinity of Fitzgerald. Nick is Fitzgerald if he had never met Zelda. Gatsby is Fitzgerald if he had not been able to marry Zelda. Tom is Fitzgerald. He wrote to get money so that he could impress Zelda Sayre, who would love him only if he had money, much like Daisy would only love Gatsby. He had very low self esteem, and felt as though he had prostituted his artistic vision so that he could marry a woman that wasn’t really in love with him.
Fitzgerald moved to New York in 1922 so that he could become more famous and rich than he already was after Paradise Lost, much like Nick did. He failed there, having to write his way out of debt with more short stories. Fitzgerald wanted his life to be something else. The author who wrote so eloquently about the effects of money on character was unable to manage his own finances. His wife was a schizophrenic and they had a very unhappy marriage. It’s no wonder The Great Gatsby was a tragedy.
Fitzgerald was known by many to be the greatest author of the Jazz Age. The roaring twenties were a time of excess and miracles. People thought that they could do anything, and that the good times would never end. This is reflected in Gatsby’s parties. Lots of drinking, famous movie stars, and wild dancing made the whole party full to the brim with uninhibited bliss. Fitzgerald also wanted a lot of friends when he was a teenager, and this may have been a way to act out his fantasy.
The war may have also had an impact on his writing. Having served in it, he was given to writing about the evils of man and success. This is common among postwar authors, though bizarre because he never saw combat. Fitzgerald became an overnight success with Paradise Lost. He had money and fame, but not many true friends. He was known as a playboy, and was not taken seriously by many publishers and readers.
Fitzgerald was not good at what he really wanted to do, which was writing plays. Writing short stories was something that he did reluctantly; only when he needed money. His works were escapes for him, where he could do or be anything that he wanted. This a way for him to get away from the real world, which had mob shoot outs and rampant law breaking.
During a time when cars were just beginning to become common, Gatsby's car is used as a symbol of the crass materialism of the 1920s. Factory-made cars were normally black, so Gatsby's specially-made car displays his wealth and delight in material possessions. "It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hatboxes and supper-boxes and toolboxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a hundred suns. Sitting down behind many layers of glass in a sort of green conservatory we started to town." (68) Also used in The Great Gatsby is the bad driving motif. Jordan refers to herself as a careless driver, but says she'll be all right, so long as she does not meet anyone as careless as herself; and there is an incident of bad driving after one of Gatsby's party.
This essay examined the role of weather and heat as a test of character. It was written by Wayne Crawford. The essay cites several dozen examples of the characters interacting with their environment, such as Daisy’s voice being “cold” as though the fire had left her. It also describes the instances where certain words were omitted from the manuscript and included in the typescript, and vice versa.
I thought that it was interesting to read, but often read too much into the work. Sometimes the essay was too complex for me to interpret and I did get lost on occasion. It is a very specialized essay, useful to only those who have a deep and almost obsessive desire to uncover every last secret The Great Gatsby contains. The text is very flowing, utilizing just the right words. It was a better read than the actual novel.
In the end, I don’t know why this is a classic. The reason so many people like it is because there is so much there that it warrants a second read. It is intricately crafted, but not for me. In it’s time it may have been a best seller, but in today’s society of instant gratification, it become nearly unreadable. The only reason to read this instead of something else is because everyone else is doing it.