|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published on April 10, 1925, the story is set in New York City and Long Island during the summer of 1922. The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age." Following the shock and chaos of the First World War, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers and encouraged organized crime. Although Fitzgerald, like Nick Carraway in his novel, idolized the riches and glamour of the age, he was uncomfortable with the unrestrained materialism and lack of morality that went with it. The Great Gatsby was not popular upon initial printing and sold fewer than 25,000 copies during the remaining fifteen years of Fitzgerald's life.
Plot summarySpoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Nick Carraway, a bond dealer from the Midwest, befriends his neighbor Jay Gatsby, an extremely wealthy man known for hosting lavish soirées in his Long Island mansion. Gatsby's great wealth is a subject of much rumor; none of the guests Nick meets at Gatsby's parties know much about his past. Nick also visits Tom Buchanan, a phenomenally wealthy former college athlete, and his wife Daisy, who is Nick's cousin. Gatsby is famous for his parties. Every Saturday, hundreds of people come to Gatsby's house for the lavish parties. Nick soon finds himself in this party scene, although he states that he despises the entire concept of mindless entertainment. Later, Nick learns from Gatsby that Gatsby was holding these parties in hopes that Daisy, his long-time lover, would stumble into one of them by chance. Daisy and Gatsby soon begin an affair after a meeting arranged, at Gatsby's request, by Nick which is at first strained (unnerving Nick), but turns more communicative when Gatsby begins to relax. In the meantime, Nick and Jordan, a character first introduced during Nick's first visit to Tom and Daisy's domain, start a relationship, which Nick already predicts will be superficial. Eventually, Tom notices Gatsby's love for Daisy and that Gatsby is also a bootlegger. Tom claims that he's been "researching" about Gatsby and expresses his hatred towards Gatsby by untactfully accusing Gatsby of illegal activities. During this scene, Gatsby forces Daisy to claim that she has never loved Tom in hopes of erasing the last five years of her past so that she may just come back to him. Daisy says what Gatsby tells her to say, but hesitantly. Tom, noticing this uncomfortable bond between Daisy and Gatsby, orders them to drive back home from the hotel back to Tom's house together, mocking Gatsby in that he knows nothing can happen between Daisy and Gatsby. Tom takes his time getting home with Nick and Jordan.
He finds himself in Tom's house with a gun and Tom - while in the midst of packing for an escape trip with Daisy - gives Wilson Gatsby's name. In the meantime, Gatsby is sitting by his pool, which he wishes to remain undrained, although it is autumn. Gatsby is overwhelmed with depression thinking that Daisy no longer loves him enough to leave Tom. While he is still hoping for a call from Daisy, Wilson comes and shoots Gatsby and commits suicide on the lawn not too far away. The press and police label Wilson as "insane" the moment they see what has happened. This angers Nick because Wilson was the average man who went to work everyday, had a wife, and led a happy life without trying to fulfill impossible dreams who then eventually ended up dying a death remotely caused by Tom's affair. With Gatsby dead, Nick tries to find people who will attend his funeral only to find that not even his business partners will be there to mourn for him. Finally, Mr. Gatz, Jay Gatsby's father (Gatsby was a fake name) came to the funeral, calling Jay little "Jimmy" and apparently still trapped in the past, as he kept pointing to pictures of Gatsby's house that he has held onto for quite a bit. Only three people attend Gatsby's actual funeral, during the funeral, Owl eyes says "That poor son-of-a-bitch," but aside from that, nothing else was said. After permanently breaking up connections between Jordan, Tom, and Daisy, Nick leaves and goes back to the Midwest. CompositionWith Gatsby, Fitzgerald made a conscious departure from the composition process of his previous novels. He began composing the novel in 1923, but ended up discarding most of the false start—though some of it would resurface in the story "Absolution." Unlike his previous works, Fitzgerald intended to heavily edit and reshape Gatsby, believing that it held the potential to launch him toward literary acclaim. He told his editor Max Perkins that the novel was a “consciously artistic achievement," and a "purely creative work—not trashy imaginings as in my stories but the sustained imagination of a sincere and yet radiant world." He added later during the editing process that he felt “an enormous power in me now, more than I've ever had.”[1] Along with the editing, which reframed both Daisy and Gatsby’s characters, Fitzgerald also wavered on the title of the novel. Among various titles considered were Among Ashheaps and Millionaires, Gold-Hatted Gatsby, The High-Bouncing Lover, and On the Road to West Egg. Fitzgerald also considered several variations on titles alluding to the Roman character Trimalchio from the Satyricon. Weeks before Gatsby was to be published, he wrote Perkins saying that he preferred Trimalchio's Banquet. At the last moment, Fitzgerald also considered the title Under the Red, White and Blue, referring to the book's ties with the American dream and other symbols of America. He then came up with the title The Great Gatsby which he submitted to his publisher. However, he once again changed his mind and wanted to change the title back to Under the Red, White and Blue, but by then it was too late to change. Hence the title remained The Great Gatsby.[2] Cover artThe cover art for The Great Gatsby has seen a distribution on par with its related novel; it is one of the most widely disseminated dustjacket covers of the 20th century. Commissioned by Charles Scribner of Francis Cugat (brother to Xavier), it was completed before the novel, and Fitzgerald once claimed that the cover was "written into" the novel. After several initial sketches of various completeness, Cugat decided upon a gouache depicting two reclining nudes forming the irises of a pair of disembodied female eyes hovering above the bright lights of an amusement park. There is no nose but full, voluptuous lips, and descending from the right eye is a green tear. The eyes are reminiscent of those of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, while the hue of the tear is similar to the light at the end of Daisy's dock. Extending the theme of lights, the amusement park echoes a common theme of the novel.[3] These lights also could lead to a different interpretation of the cover. The girl whose face is portrayed on the cover could be seen as a "flapper". She is looking at the materialism and the sexual sins being committed and is sad, but she is part of the group that promotes both. Just as this, Nick detests the cheap party life but admits many times throughout the book that he was in fact enjoying being part of it. Film, TV or theatrical adaptationsThe Great Gatsby has been filmed four times:
Famous American author Truman Capote was originally hired as the screenwriter for the 1974 film adaptation. In his screenplay, Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker were both written to be homosexual. After Capote was removed from the project, Coppola rewrote the screenplay. The 2002 film G (released in 2005) by Christopher Scott Cherot claims inspiration from The Great Gatsby. OperaAn operatic treatment of the novel was commissioned by the New York Metropolitan Opera to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the debut of James Levine. The opera premiered on December 20, 1999. The music and libretto are by John Harbison with popular song lyrics by Murray Horwitz. PlayThe Great Gatsby, a stage adaptation by Owen Davis, was first performed at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City on Feb 2, 1926 in a production directed by George Cukor with James Rennie and Florence Eldridge. The Great Gatsby, in a new adaptation by Simon Levy, was performed for the opening of the new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July 2006. This was billed as "the first authorized stage version of the novel since 1926." However, two months earlier, in Brussels, Belgium, The Kunsten Festival des Arts debuted Gatz, a six-hour production by the New York theater company Elevator Repair Service. Set in a ramshackle contemporary office building, Gatz utilized the entire text of Gatsby, at first read by employees at the office building, and eventually acted out by them. "Gatz" premiered in the U.S. on September 21, 2006, at the Walker Art Center (also in Minneapolis) just eleven days after the closing of The Great Gatsby at The Guthrie. Trivia
References
Sites |
Searched sites for "The Great Gatsby" |
|
No sites found. |
Sorry, no matching site records were found. |
Want your site listed here?
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Submit
your site |
|
Relevant quality search results and fast easy navigation throughout the
different sections of the site, make Americola.com |