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 World War I, 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 manufacture of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers and led to increases in 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, selling 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.

Contents

Plot summary

Composition

Cover art

Film, TV, theatrical and literary adaptations

Opera

Play

Books

Trivia

References

External links

Plot summary

''The Great Gatsby'' is a brief novel, running about 120 pages in the Scribner's paperback edition. It is one of the shortest novels to have such a major impact. And yet, within its short length, it has an epic scope typical of a much longer book. Its 120 pages are divided into nine chapters which are all brief.
The first-person narrator, Nick Carraway, begins the novel with a brief introduction in which he insists that he strenuously avoids judging people, mainly as a result of some advice his wealthy father once gave him. However, he admits that this habit often leads him into difficulties, and in particular the events concerning Gatsby he is about to describe. Nick indicates that he has left New York, where these events took place, and has returned to the Midwest. Toward the end of the novel, he says that a year or two has passed since they occurred.
Nick, a young bond trader from the Midwest, befriends his neighbor Jay Gatsby, an extremely wealthy man known for hosting lavish soirées in his Long Island mansion. Nick has rented a low-cost cottage located next to Gatsby's mansion in West Egg, the less fashionable of two seaside communities which are alongside each other (the other one being East Egg). 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. The Buchanan's have a lavish mansion in East Egg.
Gatsby is famous for his parties, hosted at his West Egg mansion. 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 former lover, would stumble into one of them by chance. Daisy and Gatsby soon begin an affair after a meeting arranged by Nick, at Gatsby's request, which is at first strained (unnerving Nick), but turns more communicative when Gatsby begins to relax. In the meantime, Nick and Jordan, a friend of Daisy introduced during Nick's first visit to Tom and Daisy's home, start a relationship, which Nick already predicts will be superficial.
Eventually, in an explosive scene at a hotel in Manhattan, Tom notices Gatsby's love for Daisy and alleges that Gatsby is 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 simply 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 on Long Island together, mocking Gatsby by saying that he knows nothing can happen between Daisy and Gatsby. Tom takes his time getting home with Nick and Jordan.
George Wilson, owner of a garage on the desolate road between Manhattan and northern Long Island, 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 the car accident. Tom remarks that Wilson, who is an 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; that Tom was driving Gatsby's yellow car earlier 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 after that confrontation, 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 makes the connection 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 packing for an escape trip with Daisy, gives Gatsby's name to Wilson. In the meantime, Gatsby is floating in his pool, overwhelmed with depression, thinking that Daisy no longer loves him. While he is still hoping for a call from Daisy, Wilson comes and shoots Gatsby. He then commits suicide on the lawn not too far away.
With Gatsby dead, Nick tries to find people who will attend his funeral only to find that not even his crooked business partners will be there to mourn for him. Finally, Mr. Gatz, Gatsby's father (Gatsby gave himself a new name after leaving home) comes to the funeral, apparently still trapped in the past. He shows Nick a well-worn photograph of Gatsby's house and a notebook that Gatsby wrote in as a child.
Only three people attend Gatsby's actual funeral: Nick, Mr. Gatz, and "Owl Eyes," a random man who had enjoyed one of Gatsby's parties earlier that summer, but whom Nick hadn't seen since. After permanently severing connections between himself and Jordan, Tom, and Daisy, Nick leaves New York and goes back to the Midwest, reflecting on Gatsby's desire to recapture the past.

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 composite-spine 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]

Film, TV, theatrical and literary adaptations

''The Great Gatsby'' has been filmed four times:
# ''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);
# ''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;
# ''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;
# ''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.
Also, it had been adopted by Takarazuka Revue in 1991, performed by Snow Troupe.

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.

Books

Ernesto Quiinonez' ''Bodega Dreams'' adapted ''The Great Gatsby'' to Spanish Harlem.

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 paid 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.
Daisy packs her bags

2.
Cornell University New Student Reading Project
3. http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/essays/eyes/eyes.html

External links

'Sources'

★ ''The Great Gatsby'', from Project Gutenberg Australia, plain text.

★ Cowley, Malcolm (1950). ''The Stories Of F.Scott Fitzgerald''. Scanned book from Internet Archive, includes ''The Great Gatsby''.

★ Index to The Great Gatsby
'Movies'

★

★

★

★

★
'Misc'

★ AP: Page Ivey: "Professor, private investigator team up in search of the real 'Great Gatsby'"

★ Washington Post - 'Gatsby': The Greatest Of Them All

★ Ray C. Fair - "Where did Fitzgerald get the idea of having Clay's Economics reside in Nick Carraway's library?"