The Great GatsbyEssay Preview: The Great GatsbyReport this essayThe Great GatsbyFitzgernald F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1925.In Scott F. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, men fight over a woman. To stay financially secure, they go into illegal business. Dreams are crushed and lives are lost.
It is a story that relates to the corruption of the American Dream.The story takes place in an area near New York called “Long Island.” It is in a shape of an egg. They focus in on places on there named “East Egg”, “West Egg”, and “The Valley of Ashes.” West egg is for people who have recently made their fortunes. The characters Nick and Gatsby live there. The Valley of Ashes is for people who are not wealthy. The Wilson family lives there. The East Egg is for people who inherit their money. The characters Daisy and Tom live there. Daisy is a distant cousin one removed of Nick’s. One of her friends is a character named Jordan baker.
Nick Carraway is the narrator of this story. He can keep secrets and is known to be trust worthy which gives the reader a better view of the story. They can see everything that is happening because the characters in this book trust him with secrets. He does not really go into the action much. He is more of an observer. This does not mean that he does not do much in the story though. He explains where he lives, the areas at where the events take place and introduces other characters. He is a neighbor and a friend of one of the main characters, Jay Gatsby.
Jordan baker is a famous golfer. Nick likes Jordan Baker’s figure, high spirits, and her high classiness. Though he hates how she is dishonest. In the beginning of the story, he mainly explains things. The following quote is an example of one of her lies and also tells the reader how Nick feels about her:
“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation “An absolute rose?”
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing but stirring warmth flowed from her as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words…-The Great Gatsby, 14
Jay Gatsby is a main character of the story as you may have already guessed due to the title of this book. He frequently has parties. It is from the parties that he meets Nick. He used to be an officer and that is when he met Daisy. He fell in love with her and lied to her telling her that he came from a rich family. She promised that she would wait for him when he went to fight in World War I. In 1919 there was a law passed that disallowed the sale of alcohol. After the war, Gatsby studied at Oxford. He partnered up with Meyer Wolfshiem and starts a grain alcohol dealing business to get money quick so that when he goes back to Daisy, he would be able to secure her financially. He did not know that Daisy become impatient and married another man yet.
Daisy married a man named Tom. Tom gave her a pearl bracelet with a value of over 300,000 dollars. He came from a rich family and could secure her financially. Tom is secretly having an affair with Myrtle who is also married but thinks that her husband, Mr. Wilson, does not care about her. Nick organizes a meeting inviting Gatsby and Daisy. Daisy was not told that Gatsby would be there for she might not have come if he was there. She may not have come because she feels guilty that she married Tom and broke her promise of waiting for Gatsby. She is also afraid that he still loves her which would cause a quarrel between him and her husband. Though if she were there, turning around and walking away would be rude.
They meet up and talk. Soon, Tom is called over along with Gatsby and Daisy. Since Tom and Gatsby are both fighting over Daisy, this creates a conflict and Gatsby pushes Daisy to tell Tom that she never loved him. She said it but did not mean it. She loved Tom but she also loved Gatsby. I believe that the pearl bracelet that Tom bought for her is like buying her. Daisy is struggling between loving material possession and loving someone for who they actually are. Gatsby knows that she will not love him fully and thus his dreams were shattered. His purpose for living was gone.
Mr. Wilson is Myrtle’s husband. They were having a quarrel and Myrtle runs out into the streets. At the same time, Daisy was driving with Gatsby. Gatsby tries to get hold of the wheel and then Daisy crashed into Myrtle and kills her. They drive away afterwards. Mr. Wilson is mad and goes mental. He asks everyone if they knew who has killed her. He threatened Tom with a gun to tell him the owner of the car that ran over her wife. He names Gatsby even though Daisy had something to do with it. One may see this as Gatsby taking the blame due to his love for Daisy. Mr. Wilson goes over to Gatsby’s hour and shoots him. I believe that the author does that because Gatsby’s purpose in the story is completed. Mr. Wilson then commits
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Mr. Woodson, I have heard that in the future where I wrote an anthology of stories from the future, Gainsborough was going to come out with an anthology in which every book, issue, panel, and issue from this series will be a full novel – but I didn’t want it to be as short. A lot of them are already done. There’s so much stuff that was written and the story was written in just three months, at two weeks each, each issue. So I thought that it may not be possible as long as there is enough to complete it again.
I also didn’t want Gainsborough to make a bigger impact than I had originally hoped. And I knew it wasn’t the end of a storyline, but I wasn’t sure about that, so I ended up leaving Gainsborough in the year 2009. In hindsight, I think most of the stories I have, in one form or another, won the anthology. But I can’t promise any of them have an audience – I’m quite sure that a lot of them may not have had any audience.
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Mr. Woodson, I was wondering if I could see the original author’s intent when he wrote the book. He mentions three parts of his story: Gainsborough, his daughter, John and her father, but he didn’t say, “No more. I am leaving Gainsborough and I would like to go back once this is done”.[5]
I saw this and so I followed him on Twitter:
I really did, right.
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Hm. It was very interesting thinking about his intentions when he first read the story. There’s this notion that it’s about him and his children growing up. What if he would have done that to his wife? Did he think she would do that to his daughter? Or was it something else?
I guess you could say he didn’t write that much story. I was reading the book thinking that at some point or another I might want to write a novel about it because it sort of happened after reading the book. I could probably write a book about it with some respect, he said at the end, because it’s hard to say so, but it’s about the future. And when I read it, I’m like, wow, that’ll make some sense.
So I think that Gainsborough did plan this and I think the writing involved in that story was very interesting, but I’d love to see the ending.
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Well, I love the ending, thank you. But I wanted to ask