The Great Gatsby

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.

Although it was adapted into both a Broadway play and a Hollywood film within a year of publication, it was largely forgotten during the Great Depression and World War II. After it was republished in 1945 and 1953, it quickly found a wide readership, and is now often regarded as the Great American Novel. It is now a standard text in high school and university courses on American literature in countries around the world.

Plot summary

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.

George Wilson and his wife, Myrtle, with whom Tom is having an affair, are also having an argument. She runs out of the house, only to be hit by Gatsby's car, driven by Daisy, and is killed instantly. On the way back home, Tom, Jordan, and Nick notice a car accident. Tom mutters that Wilson, the auto repairman, will finally have some business, but stops shortly after noticing something wrong.Tom soon realizes that his lover is dead. During this grotesque scene, Wilson comes out of his shop, half-insane and half in shock and talks about a yellow car. Tom leads Wilson into a private place and tells him that the yellow car was not his - Tom was driving Gatsby's yellow car when they were driving to the hotel and stopped by at Wilson's for gasoline. Wilson does not seem to listen and from that point and on, Wilson is portrayed as an insane character. He stays up all night rocking back and forth, muttering nonsense while his neighbor patiently watches over him. He finally connects that whoever driving that yellow car must have been the man Myrtle was having an affair with and makes up his mind to find that yellow car.

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.

Composition

With 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 art

The 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 adaptations

The Great Gatsby has been filmed four times:

1. The Great Gatsby (1926 film), in 1926 by Herbert Brenon – a silent movie of a stage adaptation, starring Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson, and William Powell. According to the IMDb, no known copies have survived (only a trailer with a few minutes of footage is known to exist);
2. The Great Gatsby (1949 film), in 1949 by Elliott Nugent – starring Alan Ladd, Betty Field, and Shelley Winters; far more faithful to the plot of the novel than the 1974 version; for copyright reasons, this film is not readily available;
3. The Great Gatsby (1974 film), in 1974, by Jack Clayton – the most famous screen version, starring Robert Redford in the title role with Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan & Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway, with a script by Francis Ford Coppola;
4. The Great Gatsby (2000 TV), in 2000 by Robert Markowitz – a made-for-TV movie starring Toby Stephens, Paul Rudd and Mira Sorvino.

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.

Opera

An 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.

Play

The 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

• Gatsby's copy of Hopalong Cassidy contains a note dated 1906, which is not possible since it was first published in 1910.
• The Great Gatsby was sometimes read out loud by Andy Kaufman in a faux British accent as a type of anti-humor.
• The previously mentioned event was payed homage in South Park episode 403, Timmy 2000, in which a Psychiatrist reads the novel in its entirety, to determine whether the boys have Attention Deficit Disorder.
• Seattle-based rock band Gatsbys American Dream derived their name from an obvious theme in the book.
• Businessman Bill Gates has inscribed in his library a sentence from the last page of the novel: "He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it." [1]
• The King of Queens episode "American Idle" uses The Great Gatsby as a running joke as Carrie states in the beginning that she intends to read the book, but by the end of the episode she has clearly not read it. Doug eventually comes to the conclusion that Gatsby must be a magician due to his title.
• German pop-music band Wolfsheim derived their name from one of the novel's characters.
• A Peanuts comic featured Sally teaching Bible school, but one of her students answers every question (including "Who hit Goliath in the head with a stone?" and "Who parted the Red Sea?") with the Great Gatsby. Snoopy quotes Nick watching Gatsby and Daisy dance during his nighttime dance with the little red-haired girl.

References

1. ^ Leader, Zachary. Daisy packs her bags. London Review of Books.
2. ^ Cornell University New Student Reading Project.
3. ^ http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/essays/eyes/eyes.html

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