The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby 

F. Scott Fitzgerald - 1925

"The Great American Dream" is an idea literature of the 20th century has come to define, and The Great Gatsby does it better than any. The American Dream - the dream of freedom, success and happiness is reflected in a dark light of capitalism, greed and the selfish need to attain something unattainable - the result is unfulfilled and convoluted - such is the character of Gatsby. He is a man driven by the American Dream of new money and happiness yet he is never fulfilled - he is searching for something he can never have and this is an idea mirrored int he character of Daisy - an old money beauty. Prohibition in the US, and the way we eventually find out Gatsby has made his fortune by boot-legging, in many ways encapsulates many of the themes of the novel whereby America itself was having an internal battle between morality and frivolity. Set in the 1920s, this era of extensive economic prosperity against a backdrop of crime, The Great Gatsby is a love story - a love story about a man's infatuation and obsession with a woman and synonymous infatuation and obsession with money and success.


"He stretched out his arm towards the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward - and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock."
One of the most famous symbols of the novel, Gatsby hopelessly reaching across the lake to the green light clowing at the end of Daisy's lock. The green light symbolises many things: Daisy herself, but also all of the things she represents - old money (the green mirrors the colour of an american dollar bill), economic success as a whole and the past. Gatsby is hopefulessly reaching back into the past with Daisy - a girl that no longer exists as he remembers "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past". She too had become caught up in the world of money and success - choosing to marry the "old money", ivy league educated Tom over Gatsby and other suitors. As he tries to prove his monetary power to her in an attempt to win her heart, it becomes a personal destruction. It's clear money does not fulfill the Buchanan's and they are not happy with their lives either as they flit from place to place " They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together" and Tom flits from activity to activity trying to find some sense of fulfilment and belonging "I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrevocable football game".  The setting also, for Nick's first meeting of the Buchanan's is suitably unsettled "warm windy evening" where everything in the house seems to be stagnant but also horribly shifting and directionless "The only stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon". 

Quotes 

“I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

Can’t repeat the past?…Why of course you can!” 

"There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion."

 They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther."

“She’s got an indiscreet voice,” I remarked. “It’s full of-“
I hesitated.
“Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly."