No work of art can be created in a vacuum. The socio-political and economical factors of the time pervades the work. Evidently “The Great Gatsby” is deeply rooted in the 1920s. Fitzgerald chronicles the age deftly in the novel. Fitzgerald dubbed the 1920s as “the jazz age”. The ban of alcohol which gave rise to rich bootleggers, sprawling private parties, the chaos and violence of world war one, the moral emptiness and hypocrisy: all are dextrously portrayed in the novel.
Gatsby and Nick are even seen as an autobiographical rendering of Fitzgerald himself. like Nick, Fitzgerald found the new lifestyle seductive and exciting. like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by love for a women who symbolized everything he wanted.
However “The Great Gatsby” can not and shouldn’t(I hate that word though) be seen as a dry piece of literary criticism. In an age where the author is considered “dead”, it looks pretty foolhardy to make a post facto recreation of the tale. “The Great Gatsby” is a tragic story. But it is not a tragedy of any particular age. It is a tragedy of human desire. It tries to chart the boundaries of human desires and fails(and perhaps there’s where it succeeds). can passion be strong enough to compel you to destroy your whole life? where do you draw the line? Gatsby maybe the hero or the anti-hero but he hardly cares about that. Fitzgerald does not attempt to make the readers love Gatsby. He does not paint us a saintly picture. neither does he colour him all black. what Fitzgerald does is, he creates a human in Gatsby who falls, who gets hurt and who still goes on(maybe BLINDLY IN LOVE). Fitzgerald creates a character that the readers can empathize with. Please do not attempt to judge Gatsby.
Imagine as a young boy you see a fluttering glimpse of a beautiful black horse rush by you. for a brief second of that eternity the horse looks into your eyes. For that brief eternity you quest nothing in the world but that horse. And then for rest of your life you make that quest your life. You toil very hard all your life just to make that dream into a reality. Finally when you are capable enough, you buy the horse. Then the final moment of the brief eternity when the dream become reality, you get trampled under the hooves of the horse you loved so much.
What if then? If you knew your fate would you still run after it?
Jay Gatsby did. He was shot by Geoge Wilson while he lay in his swimming pool. The object, the symbols or maybe the story itself represents the essential meaninglessness of the world and the arbitrariness of the mental process by which people invest objects with meaning.
Nick Carraway is a young man from Minnesota who moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the west egg district of Long Island. Nick’s nest-door neighbour is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby. Nick meets his cousin Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom. They introduce him to Jordon Baker with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. Gatsby takes Nick’s help to come close to Daisy and reveals to him that he and Daisy had shared a close relationship in the past. Gatsby was in love with her still. All the years he was away trying to earn enough money so that he could marry Daisy and make her happy. After meeting Gatsby, Daisy too confesses that she too was in love with Gatsby. On being confronted they reveal there emotions to Tom. Meanwhile in a fluke car accident Daisy kills Myrtle Wilson(Geoge Wilson’s wife and Tom’s mistress). Gatsby was in the can at the time too. Tom informs Geoge that the car belonged to Gatsby. George shoots Gatsby and then commits suicide. Tom and Daisy leave the town. daisy doesn’t even attend Gatsby’s funeral. Only three people including Nick and Gatsby’s father attends the funeral.
‘They’re a rotten crowd; I(Nick Carraway) shouted across the lawn. ‘you’re worth the whole damn bunch put together’.
‘It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end’.