The Great Gatsby

A little about the story

Nick Carraway rents a modest house on Long Island and finds himself living beside a man whose parties attract crowds of strangers. Jay Gatsby appears to possess everything needed for a dazzling life, yet his hospitality conceals a more particular ambition. Through his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom, Nick is drawn into a circle where money can make almost any desire seem achievable and almost any consequence someone else’s problem.

F. Scott Fitzgerald gives this glittering summer the perspective of a narrator who is both fascinated by the people around him and uneasy about what their privilege permits. The novel moves between lavish entertainments and the less attractive places that sustain them, steadily exposing differences between inherited security and newly acquired wealth. Beneath its romance lies a restless interest in time, self-invention, and the American promise of beginning again. Gatsby’s appeal depends on how intensely he can imagine a future, while the story asks what happens when that future is built from a past that cannot simply be recovered.

Things You May Not Know About The Great Gatsby

• A specific summer. The main action takes place in 1922, giving the novel a concentrated view of the prosperous and unsettled Jazz Age.
• Published in 1925. Fitzgerald’s novel appeared only a few years after its setting, rather than looking back from a distant historical period.
• Nick controls the telling. Gatsby does not narrate his own story; readers encounter him through Nick’s recollections, observations, and attempts to understand competing accounts.
• An alternative title survived in drafts. Fitzgerald considered titles involving Trimalchio, the extravagant host in the ancient Roman Satyricon, before settling on The Great Gatsby.
• A famous cover came early. Francis Cugat’s original jacket design was prepared before publication, and its floating eyes became closely associated with the book’s visual identity.