The Great Gatsby

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This article is about the novel. For the film and TV adaptations, see The Great Gatsby (disambiguation).
The Great Gatsby
The cover of the first edition of The Great Gatsby, 1925.
The cover of the first edition, 1925.
Author F. Scott Fitzgerald
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Novel
Publisher Charles Scribner's Sons
Publication date April 10, 1925
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN NA & reissue ISBN 0-7432-7356-7 (2004 paperback edition)

The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published on April 10, 1925, it is set in Long Island's North Shore and New York City during the summer of 1922.

The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age." Following the shock and chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the "roaring" 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol as mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers and led to an increase in organized crime. Although Fitzgerald, like Nick Carraway in his novel, idolized the riches and glamor of the age, he was uncomfortable with the unrestrained materialism and the lack of morality that went with it.

Although it was adapted into both a Broadway play and a Hollywood film within a year of publication, it was not popular upon initial printing, selling fewer than 25,000 copies during the remaining fifteen years of Fitzgerald's life. It was largely forgotten during the Great Depression and World War II. After its republishing in 1945 and 1953, it quickly found a wide readership and is today widely regarded as a paradigm of the Great American Novel. The Great Gatsby has since become a standard text in high school and university courses on American literature in countries around the world, and is ranked second in the Modern Library's list of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century.

Contents

Writing and publication

Fitzgerald made with Gatsby a conscious departure from the compository process of his previous novels. He started planning it in June 1922, after completing his play The Vegetable, and began composing it in 1923. He ended up discarding most of a false start, some of which would resurface in the story "Absolution."[1] Unlike his previous works, Fitzgerald intended to edit and reshape Gatsby thoroughly, 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."[2]

After the birth of their child, the Fitzgeralds moved to Great Neck, Long Island in October 1922, appropriating Great Neck as the setting for The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald's neighbors included such newly-wealthy New Yorkers as writer Ring Lardner, actor Lew Fields and comedian Ed Wynn.[3] Great Neck, on the shores of Long Island Sound, sat across a bay from Manhasset Neck or Cow Neck Peninsula, which includes the communities of Port Washington, Manorhaven, Port Washington North and Sands Point, and was home to many of New York's wealthiest established families. In his novel, Great Neck became the new-money peninsula of "West Egg" and Manhasset Neck the old-money peninsula of "East Egg".[4]

Progress on the novel was slow. In May 1924, the Fitzgeralds moved to the French Riviera, where he completed the novel. In November, he sent the draft to his publisher Perkins and his agent Harold Ober. The Fitzgeralds again relocated, this time to Rome, for the winter. Fitzgerald made revisions through the winter after Perkins informed him that the novel was too vague and Gatsby's biographical section too long. Content after a few rounds of revision, Fitzgerald returned the final batch of revised galleys in the middle of February 1925.[5]

Original cover art

The cover of The Great Gatsby is among the most celebrated pieces of jacket art in American literature.[6] A little-known artist named Francis Cugat was commissioned to illustrate the book while Fitzgerald was in the midst of writing it. The cover was completed before the novel, with Fitzgerald so enamored of it that he told his publisher he had "written it into" the novel.[6]

After several initial sketches of various completeness, Cugat produced the Art Deco-style painting of a pair of eyes hovering over the bright lights of an amusement park. The woman has no nose but full and voluptuous lips. Descending from the right eye is a green tear. The irises of the eyes are a gouache, depicting a pair of reclining nudes.[6]

Fitzgerald's remarks about incorporating the painting into the novel led to the interpretation that the eyes are reminiscent of those of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg (the novel's erstwhile proprietor of a faded commercial billboard near George Wilson's auto-repair shop) which Fitzgerald described as "blue and gigantic — their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose." Although this passage has some resemblance to the painting, a closer explanation can be found in the description of Daisy Buchanan as the "girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs".[6]

Title

The last piece to fall into place was the title. Fitzgerald was always ambivalent about it, shifting between Gatsby, Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires, Trimalchio, Trimalchio in West Egg, On the Road to West Egg, Gold-Hatted Gatsby and The High-Bouncing Lover. He initially preferred Trimalchio, after the crude parvenue of Petronius's Satyricon. Unlike Fitzgerald's reticent agonist, Trimalchio actively participated in the edacious and libidinous orgies that he hosted. That Fitzgerald refers to Gatsby by the proposed title just once in the entire novel reinforces the view that it would have been a misnomer. As Tony Tanner observes, however, there are subtle similarities between the two.[7]

On 7 November 1924, Fitzgerald wrote decisively to Perkins — "I have now decided to stick to the title I put on the book [...] Trimalchio in West Egg" — but was eventually persuaded that the reference was too obscure and that people would not be able to pronounce it. His wife and Perkins both expressed their preference for The Great Gatsby and, in December, Fitzgerald agreed.[8] A month before publication, after a final review of the proofs, he asked if it would be possible to re-title it Trimalchio or Gold-Hatted Gatsby, but Perkins advised against it. On March 19, Fitzgerald asked if the book could be renamed Under the Red White and Blue, but it was at that stage too late to change. The Great Gatsby was published on April 10, 1925. Fitzgerald remarked that "the title is only fair, rather bad than good."[9]

Plot summary

First-person narrator Nick Carraway introduces the novel, insisting that, on the advice of his wealthy father, he strenuously avoids judging people. He admits that this habit often causes him trouble, with particular reference to events concerning a man named Gatsby. Nick leaves New York, where these events took place, to return to the Midwest, revealing that his story is a flashback of his experiences there. Towards the end of the novel, Nick claims that a year or two has lapsed since they took place.

His narrative begins when, as a young man from the Midwest, he moves to New York, renting a low-cost cottage located in West Egg, the less old-fashioned of two adjacent, fictional and wealthy seaside communities on Long Island Sound (the other being East Egg, a community inhabited by the "old aristocracy"). Nick visits Tom and Daisy Buchanan, who own an opulent mansion in East Egg. Daisy is Nick's second cousin once removed. Her husband was a football player at Yale, where he and Nick were remote acquaintances, and is now a phenomenally wealthy "polo player". Nick describes the Buchanans through his visit to their mansion — Tom as an arrogant, racist athlete and Daisy a pretty but superficial housewife, with a largely-ignored three-year-old daughter. It is at the Buchanan house that Nick meets Jordan Baker, a lady-friend of Daisy's and a well-known golfer. Jordan informs Nick that Tom has a mistress in New York.

Tom rents out a lavish apartment for his extramarital affair with Myrtle, the wife of unsuspecting mechanic George Wilson. Tom proudly invites Nick to visit the secret apartment, where he is also introduced to Catherine, Myrtle's sister, and Chester and Lucille McKee, two of Myrtle's friends. The night ends with several of the guests (including Nick) getting drunk and Tom breaking Myrtle's nose after being provoked by her repetition of Daisy's name. Nick escorts Mr McKee away from the chaos back home.

Nick is the next-door neighbor on West Egg to Jay Gatsby, an extremely wealthy man known for hosting outrageously luxurious parties in his enormous mansion, where hundreds of people go every Saturday. Although many of the guests are uninvited, Nick soon receives a rather formal request from one of Gatsby's butlers and finds himself embroiled in the party scene, although he claims to despise mindless entertainment.

Gatsby is a mysterious character whose wealth is the subject of much rumour; none of the guests to whom Nick speaks know much about his past. No-one, it seems, has even met Gatsby. At one point during the party, a man begins a conversation with Nick, claiming to recognise him from the US Army Third Division during the Great War. Nick affirms that he was in this Division and mentions the strange and inexcusable absence of their host. The man apologetically reveals himself to be none other than Jay Gatsby himself, surprising Nick, who had expected him to be older and not as personable. Nick and Gatsby begin a close friendship.

Nick is initially confused about why Gatsby throws parties without introducing himself to his guests and becomes even more confused when Gatsby drives him to New York and discloses (without explaining his motivation for doing so) an apparently far-fetched version of his upbringing. Nick's female acquaintance Jordan Baker eventually reveals to him that Gatsby holds these parties in the hope that Daisy, his former love, will pay a visit. It is also through Jordan that Gatsby asks Nick to set up a meeting with Daisy. The reunion is initially awkward but ultimately successful: Gatsby and Daisy begin an affair. In the meantime, Nick and Jordan Baker, whom Nick re-encounters at another party, also start a relationship, which Nick already predicts will be superficial.

Eventually, in and leading up to an explosive scene at the Plaza Hotel in New York, Tom notices Gatsby's love for Daisy and alleges, in front of Gatsby, Daisy, Nick and Jordan, that the first-mentioned is a bootlegger. Tom claims that he has been researching Gatsby and expresses his loathing of him. Gatsby, hoping to erase the last five years so that she may be with him, urges Daisy to tell Tom that she never loved him. Daisy obliges with an indisposition that is discerned by Tom, who denies the claim. He tells them to drive together from the hotel to Tom and Daisy's house on Long Island; Tom mocks Gatsby, claiming that he knows nothing can happen between them. Tom takes his time getting home in the company of Nick and Jordan.

George Wilson, the owner of an auto repair garage on a desolate road between Manhattan and northern Long Island, is also arguing with his wife Myrtle (with whom Tom has been having an affair since the start of the novel). She runs out of the house, only to be hit by Gatsby's car, which is driven by Daisy. Myrtle is killed instantly, and Daisy and Gatsby speed away. Later, as Tom, Jordan, and Nick are on their way home, they notice the accident. Tom remarks casually that Wilson will finally have some business, but soon realizes that his lover Myrtle is dead. During this grotesque scene, Wilson comes out of his shop, half-insane and half in shock, and rants about having seen a yellow car. Tom leads Wilson into a private place and tells him that the yellow car was not Tom's and that Tom was driving Gatsby's yellow car earlier in the day (when Tom's group was driving to the hotel and stopped by at Wilson's for gasoline). Wilson does not seem to listen, and Tom, Jordan and Nick leave. Wilson seems to have gone insane. He stays up all night, rocking back and forth, and muttering nonsense, while Michaelis, his neighbor, patiently supervises. Wilson makes a connection with whomever was driving the car and the man with whom Myrtle was cheating on him. He makes up his mind to find it.

Over the past few weeks, Nick has abandoned his role as an outsider and has instead become intimately involved in Gatsby's life. When he finds out about the accident, he advises Gatsby to run away for a week. The two have breakfast at Gatsby's pool. "They're [Daisy, Tom, Jordan] a rotten crowd," Nick tells him. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together." Gatsby smiles his trademark smile, which, in Nick's words, "faced—or seemed to face—the whole world, then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor."

Wilson finds his way to Tom's house with a gun, and Tom, while packing for an escape trip with Daisy, names Gatsby as the driver of the yellow car that killed his wife. Gatsby is floating in his pool, overwhelmed with depression, thinking that Daisy no longer loves him and hoping for a call from her. There Wilson finds and kills him before committing suicide on a nearby lawn.

Nick tries to find people to attend Gatsby's funeral, only to learn that not even his crooked business partners will mourn him. Finally, Nick meets Mr. Gatz, Gatsby's father, who comes to the funeral, still trapped in the past. He shows Nick a well-worn photograph of Gatsby's house and a notebook that Gatsby kept as a youth, illustrating his drive and ambition.

Gatsby's servants aside, only three people attend his funeral — Nick, Mr. Gatz, and "Owl Eyes," a man who was at one of Gatsby's parties earlier that summer, but whom Nick had not seen since. After severing connections with Jordan, and a brief run-in with Tom, Nick returns permanently to the Midwest, reflecting on Gatsby's desire to recapture the past.

Characters

Major Characters

  • Jay Gatsby (originally James "Jimmy" Gatz)—a young, self-made, wealthy ex-army officer who throws lavish parties and rekindles an old affair with Daisy
  • Nick Carraway—the 29-year-old narrator and a native of Minnesota, who has moved to West Egg, Long Island
  • Thomas "Tom" Buchanan—an arrogant, athletic acquaintance of Nick who lives on East Egg
  • Daisy Buchanan née Fay—the second cousin, once removed of Nick. She is also Tom's wife
  • George B. Wilson—Tom's mechanic and the quiet owner of a garage
  • Myrtle Wilson—George's wife, but she is having an affair with Tom
  • Jordan Baker—a long-time friend of Daisy and a professional golfer who begins a relationship with Nick. Fitzgerald told Maxwell Perkins that her character was based on the golfer Edith Cummings, a friend of Ginevra King.[10]

Minor Characters

  • Catherine—Myrtle's sister
  • Chester and Lucille McKee—Myrtle's friends
  • "Owl-eyes"—a party-goer who Nick meets in Gatsby's library
  • Meyer Wolfsheim—Gatsby's crooked work associate
  • Ewing Klipspringer—a mysterious party-goer who often stays over at Gatsby's mansion
  • Pammy Buchanan—the Buchanans' three-year-old daughter
  • Henry C. Gatz—Gatsby's somewhat estranged father
  • Michaelis—Wilson's neighbor.

Film, TV, theatrical and literary adaptations

The Great Gatsby has been filmed four times:

  1. The Great Gatsby, 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, in 1949 by Elliott Nugent – starring Alan Ladd, Betty Field, and Shelley Winters; for copyright reasons, this film is not readily available;
  3. The Great Gatsby, 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, 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.

Stage

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.

Also, it had been adopted by Takarazuka Revue in 1991, performed by Snow Troupe. It will performed by Moon Troupe of the company in 2008.

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.

Books

  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
  • Ernesto Quiñonez's Bodega Dreams adapted The Great Gatsby to Spanish Harlem
  • The Great Gatsby, a graphic novel adaptation by Australian cartoonist Nicki Greenberg
  • The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian imagines the later years of Daisy and Tom Buchanan's marriage as a social worker in 2007 investigates the possibility that a deceased elderly homeless person is Daisy's son.

In popular culture

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."[11]

Notes

  1. ^ Bruccoli 2000, p. 53–54
  2. ^ Leader, Zachary. Daisy packs her bags. London Review of Books.
  3. ^ Bruccoli 2000, p. 53–54
  4. ^ Bruccoli 2000, p. 38–39
  5. ^ Bruccoli 2000, p. 54–56
  6. ^ a b c d Scribner, Charles III. "Celestial Eyes/ Scribner III Celestial Eyes—from Metamorphosis to Masterpiece". In Bruccoli 2000, p. 160–68. Originally published in 1991.
  7. ^ Tanner's introduction to the Penguin edition (2000), p. vii-viii.
  8. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 206–07
  9. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 215–17
  10. ^ Bruccoli 2000, p. 9–10
  11. ^ Paterson, Thane. "Advice for Bill Gates: A Little Culture Wouldn't Hurt", Business Week, JUNE 13, 2000. Retrieved on 2008-03-21. 

References

  • Bruccoli, Matthew Joseph (ed.) (2000), F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: A Literary Reference, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, ISBN 0786709960 
  • Bruccoli, Matthew Joseph (2002), Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald (2nd rev. ed.), Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, ISBN 1570034559 .
  • Curnutt, Kirk (ed.) (2004), A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195153022 
  • Mizener, Arthur (1951), The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Boston: Houghton Mifflin .
  • Prigozy, Ruth (ed.) (2002), The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521624479 

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