The Great Gatsby

Guest blogger Stephanie Rattan usually blogs about movies but since this book impressed her, she decided to tell us why... 

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The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by the great American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. This novel follows a cast of colorful characters living on Long Island in the summer of 1922. The novel is narrated by Nick Carraway, a thoughtful young man who just moved to the fictional town known as West Egg. Nick tells the story of the title character, Jay Gatsby, a young and mysterious millionaire who lives next door to Nick in West Egg. The story primarily focuses on the hopeful Jay Gatsby and his undying passion for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan who resides in East Egg with her wealthy husband, Tom Buchanan. In this novel we also see the plight of the poor displayed in the characters of Myrtle and George Wilson who both live in The Valley of Ashes, another fictional place which is located between West Egg and New York City.

The Great Gatsby explores various themes such as decadence, idealism, excess and moral decay; we see how all of these aspects corrupted the American dream in the 1920s. The American Dream was supposed to be about individualism and pursuing one’s dreams but instead this idea became so deeply corrupted in the 1920s, as can be seen in the novel where everyone, regardless of class, were just aiming to become filthy rich through any means possible and by doing this they caused a significant moral decay in society. There was still no equality, no liberty and no real happiness so it was not surprising that this "American Dream" failed the characters in this book countless times.

This novel is overflowing with symbolism as a lot takes place through innuendo and suggestion. An aspect of this film that I really like and which stands out to me the most would have to be Fitzgerald’s clever use of setting throughout the novel. West Egg where Gatsby resides is seen as the place where the ‘new rich’ dwell, while East Egg is where the aristocratic families with old money live and then there is The Valley of Ashes, the home of the struggling working class. West Egg, East Egg and The Valley of Ashes are larger representations of the persons living in these places, therefore the geographical setting creates a divide among the different social classes. Most, if not all of the violent conflict in the novel takes place between the rich and the poor. All of the characters and their various settings can be looked at in relation to the wild and destructive state of the American Dream in the 1920s, from Jay Gatsby of West Egg and his “extraordinary gift of hope” which leads to his life finding an abrupt and horrible end, then to the character of Daisy, a beautiful socialite who lives her American Dream through her aristocratic husband, and then to Tom, a man who was fortunately born into his American Dream. The characters of George and Myrtle Wilson wish to achieve the American Dream but sadly did not make it far; they appear to have been doomed from the very start.

Fitzgerald created an enticing world, one where money was the object of everyone’s affection, whether it was the ‘new rich’, the aristocrats or the working class, greed possessed everyone. In the novel we see and understand what the American Dream meant to each character, how it related to them and how it failed most of them. Gatsby ran away from his poverty in rural North Dakota, he ran as hard and as far as he could. He kept running towards his dream of a life drenched in opulence and his prayer was answered the day he met Dan Cody, the man who changed his life. The fact that Gatsby’s reinvented himself from someone of a lower class to someone with a significant amount of wealth is truly admirable, but it’s the way in which he accumulated his fabulous wealth that is the problem; he did not do it through hard work and labor but rather through illegal activities. Gatsby became part of a dark, grim and shady world where all of his wealth was supported by taking advantage of the Prohibition in America at the time, therefore portraying the unattractive underside of wealth. Gatsby is dehumanized by the way he acquires his vast wealth and by what he intends to do with this money.

But other than Gatsby, the ban on alcohol meant nothing to most people in the 1920s because they drank their hearts out anyway; if anything, the prohibition led to people drinking more. Gatsby like many others is overtaken by the insatiable hunger for more, through any means available. Gatsby uses this money to decorate his life by building a house in West Egg that is described as “collosal,” and using this house to throw glamorous jazz parties on a regular basis, just to gain Daisy’s attention. The time when the book was set, was a time that some called the Jazz Age. This period in time was strongly reflected in Gatsby’s parties. At Gatsby’s parties people were not invited (with the exception of Nick Carraway), they simply went. Gatsby’s jazz parties were like an amusement park for adults, overflowing with alcohol, intimate dancing and other socially questionably activities. People just didn’t seem to have a care in the world, they lived to attend Gatsby’s parties, this was how meaningless life had become. 

The Valley of Ashes, another place of setting, really stood out to me in the novel. Here we turn to the characters of George and Myrtle Wilson who reside in the Valley of Ashes which immediately says a lot about this couple and their state of immense poverty. The Valley of Ashes is a solemn dumping ground and when I think of The Valley of Ashes, devoid of color and life, I cannot help but think of T.S Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. Eliot’s poem exposes the grim state of Europe post World War I, where people were severely wounded not just physically but mentally, emotionally, spiritually and sexually, and the same can be said for the characters in Fitzgerald’s novel. The Wilson’s American Dream can only come true with the help of Tom, but they don’t seem to realize that Tom has absolutely no intention of helping them. The Wilsons portray the novel’s representation of the wretched lower class and the ways in which these working class persons are kept at the very bottom of the social ladder and would remain there for the rest of their lives. The Valley of Ashes in the novel may be seen as the place of consequence for all the demoralizing acts that were taking place in America at the time. The Valley of Ashes is symbolic of a failed American nation which has been transformed from a time of genuine happiness to a time where everyone has foolishly trapped themselves in a moral wasteland.

In conclusion, I loved this book, it’s one of my favorites! So much was going on in the novel, it really got my wheels turning. The Great Gatsby is truly a phenomenal example of all that was wrong in the American society in the 1920s. All of the characters in this novel clearly portrayed how the American Dream failed ALL classes of persons.