The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald All new material ©2008 Enotes.com Inc. or its Licensors. All Rights Reserved. No portion may be reproduced without permission in writing from the publisher. For complete copyright information please see the online version of this text at http://www.enotes.com/great-gatsby Table of Contents Introduction.........................................................................................................................................................1 Overview..............................................................................................................................................................2 F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography............................................................................................................................8 Summary............................................................................................................................................................11 Summary and Analysis.....................................................................................................................................14 Chapter 1 Summary and Analysis..........................................................................................................14 Chapter 2 Summary and Analysis..........................................................................................................21 Chapter 3 Summary and Analysis..........................................................................................................26 Chapter 4 Summary and Analysis..........................................................................................................29 Chapter 5 Summary and Analysis..........................................................................................................33 Chapter 6 Summary and Analysis..........................................................................................................37 Chapter 7 Summary and Analysis..........................................................................................................39 Chapter 8 Summary and Analysis..........................................................................................................43 Chapter 9 Summary and Analysis..........................................................................................................46 Quizzes...............................................................................................................................................................51 Chapter 1 Questions and Answers.........................................................................................................51 Chapter 2 Questions and Answers.........................................................................................................52 Chapter 3 Questions and Answers.........................................................................................................53 Chapter 4 Questions and Answers.........................................................................................................54 Chapter 5 Questions and Answers.........................................................................................................54 Chapter 6 Questions and Answers.........................................................................................................55 Chapter 7 Questions and Answers.........................................................................................................56 Chapter 8 Questions and Answers.........................................................................................................57 Chapter 9 Questions and Answers.........................................................................................................58 Themes...............................................................................................................................................................60 Style....................................................................................................................................................................62 Historical Context.............................................................................................................................................64 Critical Overview..............................................................................................................................................66 Character Analysis............................................................................................................................................67 Essays and Criticism.........................................................................................................................................71 Three Themes in The Great Gatsby.......................................................................................................71 Major and Minor Characters in The Great Gatsby................................................................................72 Critique of American Upper Class Values.............................................................................................79 The Paradoxical Role of Women...........................................................................................................81 Fitzgerald's Use of the Color Green.......................................................................................................83 The American Dream.............................................................................................................................85 Romance and Cynicism in The Great Gatsby........................................................................................87 i Table of Contents Essays and Criticism A Modernist Masterwork.......................................................................................................................89 Fitzgerald's Distinctly American Style of Writing................................................................................92 The Jazz Age..........................................................................................................................................94 The Theme of Time in The Great Gatsby..............................................................................................96 Jordan Baker, a Soldier in the Culture War...........................................................................................98 George and Myrtle Wilson.....................................................................................................................99 Major Characters, Time, Ambiguity and Tragedy...............................................................................101 The Greatness of Gatsby......................................................................................................................103 A Note on Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby............................................................................................106 Suggested Essay Topics..................................................................................................................................110 Ten Important Quotations.............................................................................................................................113 Sample Essay Outlines....................................................................................................................................117 Compare and Contrast...................................................................................................................................119 Topics for Further Study................................................................................................................................120 Media Adaptations..........................................................................................................................................121 What Do I Read Next?....................................................................................................................................122 Bibliography and Further Reading...............................................................................................................123 ii Introduction In 1925, The Great Gatsby was published and hailed as an artistic and material success for its young author, F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is considered a vastly more mature and artistically masterful treatment of Fitzgerald's themes than his earlier fiction. These works examine the results of the Jazz Age generation's adherence to false material values. In The Great Gatsby's nine chapters, Fitzgerald presents the rise and fall of Jay Gatsby, as related in a first-person narrative by Nick Carraway. Carraway reveals the story of a farmer's son-turned racketeer, named Jay Gatz. His ill-gotten wealth is acquired solely to gain acceptance into the sophisticated, moneyed world of the woman he loves, Daisy Fay Buchanan. His romantic illusions about the power of money to buy respectability and the love of Daisy—the “golden girl” of his dreams—are skillfully and ironically interwoven with episodes that depict what Fitzgerald viewed as the callousness and moral irresponsibility of the affluent American society of the 1920s. America at this time experienced a cultural and lifestyle revolution. In the economic arena, the stock market boomed, the rich spent money on fabulous parties and expensive acquisitions, the automobile became a symbol of glamour and wealth, and profits were made, both legally