critical thinking and analysis for the great gatsby

A Summary and Analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The Great Gatsby is the quintessential Jazz Age novel, capturing a mood and a moment in American history in the 1920s, after the end of the First World War. Rather surprisingly, The Great Gatsby sold no more than 25,000 copies in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s lifetime. It has now sold over 25 million copies.

If Fitzgerald had stuck with one of the numerous working titles he considered for the novel, it might have been published as Trimalchio in West Egg (a nod to a comic novel from ancient Rome about a wealthy man who throws lavish parties), Under the Red, White and Blue , or even The High-Bouncing Lover (yes, really).

How did this novel come to be so widely acclaimed and studied, and what does it all mean? Before we proceed to an analysis of Fitzgerald’s novel, here’s a quick summary of the plot.

The Great Gatsby : plot summary

Nick Carraway, the narrator of the novel, is a young man who has come to New York to work on the stock exchange. He lives on the island of West Egg, where his neighbour is the wealthy Jay Gatsby, who owns a mansion.

One evening, Nick is dining with his neighbours from East Egg, Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Tom is having an affair, and goes to answer the phone at one point; Daisy follows him out of the room, and their fellow guest, a woman named Jordan Baker, explains to Nick about Tom’s mistress.

A short while after this, Nick is with Tom when Tom sets up a meeting with his mistress, Myrtle, the wife of a garage mechanic named Wilson. Nick attends a party with Tom and Myrtle; Tom hits his mistress when she mentions Daisy’s name.

In the summer, Gatsby throws a number of lavish parties at his mansion. He meets Jordan Baker again and the two are drawn to each other. Nobody seems to know the real Gatsby, or to be able to offer much reliable information about his identity. Who is he?

Gatsby befriends Nick and drives him to New York. Gatsby explains that he wants Nick to do him a favour: Jordan Baker tells him that Daisy was Gatsby’s first love and he is still in love with her: it’s the whole reason Gatsby moved to West Egg, so he could be near Daisy, even though she’s married to Tom. Gatsby wants Nick to invite both him and Daisy round for tea.

When they have tea together, Gatsby feels hopeful that he can recover his past life with Daisy before she was married. However, he knows that Daisy is unlikely to leave Tom for him. When she expresses a dislike for his noisy parties, he scales down his serving staff at his house and tones down the partying.

When they are all at lunch together, Tom realises that Daisy still loves Gatsby. Tom goads Gatsby as he realises he’s losing his mistress and, now, his wife. While staying together in a suite at the Plaza Hotel, Daisy tells Tom that she loves both men.

On their way back home, Gatsby’s car accidentally hits and kills Myrtle Wilson, Tom’s mistress, who has rushed out into the road after her husband found out about her affair. Tom finds her body and is distraught. Nick learns that Daisy, not Gatsby, was driving the car when Myrtle was killed.

Gatsby also tells Nick that he had built himself up from nothing: he was a poor man named James Gatz who made himself rich through the help of a corrupt millionaire named Dan Cody.

The next day, Nick finds Gatsby dead in his own swimming pool: Wilson, after his wife was killed by Gatsby’s car, turned up at Gatsby’s mansion to exact his revenge. Wilson’s body is nearby in the grass. The novel ends with Nick winding up Gatsby’s affairs and estate, before learning that Tom told Wilson where he could find Gatsby so he could take revenge.

The Great Gatsby : analysis

The Great Gatsby is the best-known novel of the Jazz Age, that period in American history that had its heyday in the 1920s. Parties, bootleg cocktails (it’s worth remembering that alcohol was illegal in the US at this time, under Prohibition between 1920 and 1933), and jazz music (of course) all characterised a time when Americans were gradually recovering from the First World War and the Spanish flu pandemic (1918-20).

One reason The Great Gatsby continues to invite close analysis is the clever way Fitzgerald casts his novel as neither out-and-out criticism of Jazz Age ‘values’ nor as an unequivocal endorsement of them. Gatsby’s parties may be a mere front, a way of coping with Daisy’s previous rejection of him and of trying to win her back, but Fitzgerald – and his sympathetic narrator, Nick Carraway – do not ridicule Gatsby’s behaviour as wholly shallow or vacuous.

Fitzgerald’s choice to have a first-person narrator, rather than a more detached and impersonal ‘omniscient’ third-person narrator, is also significant. Nick Carraway is closer to Gatsby than an impersonal narrator would be, yet the fact that Nick narrates Gatsby’s story, rather than Gatsby telling his own story, nevertheless provides Nick with some detachment, as well as a degree of innocence and ignorance over Gatsby’s identity and past.

Nick Carraway is both part of Gatsby’s world and yet also, at the same time, an observer from the side-lines, someone who is not rich and extravagant as many in Gatsby’s circle are, yet someone who is ushered into that world by an enthusiastic Jay Gatsby, who sees in Carraway a man in whom he can confide.

Nevertheless, Fitzgerald deftly sets the world of West Egg, with Gatsby’s mock-chateau and swimming pool, against the rather grittier and grimier reality for most Americans at the time. If Gatsby himself symbolises the American dream – he has made himself a success, absurdly wealthy with a huge house and a whole retinue of servants, having started out in poverty – then there are plenty of reminders in The Great Gatsby that ‘the American dream’ remains just that, a dream, for the majority of Americans:

About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.

This is the grey, bleak, industrial reality for millions of Americans: not for them is the world of parties, quasi-enchanted gardens full of cocktails and exotic foods, hydroplanes, and expensive motorcars.

Yet the two worlds are destined to meet on a personal level: the Valley of Ashes (believed to be modelled on Corona dump in Queens, New York, and inspired by T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land ) is where Wilson’s garage is located. The dual tragedy of Gatsby’s and Wilson’s deaths at the end of the novel symbolises the meeting of these two worlds.

The fact that Gatsby is innocent of the two crimes or sins which motivate Wilson – his wife’s adultery with Tom and Daisy’s killing of Myrtle with Gatsby’s car – hardly matters: it shows the subtle interconnectedness of these people’s lives, despite their socioeconomic differences.

What’s more, as Ian Ousby notes in his Introduction to Fifty American Novels (Reader’s Guides) , there is more than a touch of vulgarity about Gatsby’s lifestyle: his house is a poor imitation of a genuine French chateau, but he is no aristocrat; his car is ‘ridiculous’; and his very nickname, ‘the Great Gatsby’, makes him sound like a circus entertainer (perhaps a magician above all else, which is apt given the magical and enchanted way Carraway describes the atmosphere and detail at Gatsby’s parties).

And ultimately, Gatsby’s lavish lifestyle fails to deliver happiness to him, too: he doesn’t manage to win Daisy back to him, so at the same time Fitzgerald is not holding up Gatsby’s ‘success’ uncritically to us.

Is Gatsby black? Although he is known for having been played in film adaptations by Robert Redford and Leonardo DiCaprio, and the novel does not state that Gatsby is an African American, the scholar Carlyle V. Thompson has suggested that certain clues or codes in the novel strongly hint at Gatsby being a black American who has had to make his own way in the world, rising from a poor socio-economic background, and not fully accepted by other people in his social circle because of racial discrimination.

Whether we accept or reject this theory, it is an intriguing idea that, although Fitzgerald does not support this theory in the novel, that may have been deliberate: to conceal Gatsby’s blackness but, as it were, hide it in plain sight.

In the last analysis, The Great Gatsby sums up the Jazz Age, but through offering a tragedy, Fitzgerald shows that the American dream is founded on ashes – both the industrial dirt and toil of millions of Americans for whom the dream will never materialise, and the ashes of dead love affairs which Gatsby, for all of his quasi-magical properties, will never bring fully back to life.

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10 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby”

I regret the several hours wasted in slogging through this low-prole distraction.

You might want to start with something like Dick and Jane.

One of my favorite novels. I have always loved this book. No matter how may times I read it, more is revealed.

The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite novels. Thank you for the detailed analysis! I can also add that Fitzgerald includes lots of symbols in the novel. To my mind, one of the most vivid symbols is a giant billboard with the face of Doctor TJ Eckleburg which is towering over the Valley of Ashes. These eyes are watching the dismal grey scene of poverty and decay. I guess the billboard symbolizes the eyes of God staring at the Americans and judging them. In case seomeone is interested in symbols in The Great Gatsby, there is a nice article about it. Here: https://custom-writing.org/blog/symbols-in-the-great-gatsby

While I could imagine and accept a modern film version of Gatsby as black, I really can’t espouse the notion that Fitzgerald had that in mind. If you know anything about American society in the 1920s, you’d know that you didn’t have to be black or of some other minority to be outside the winner’s circle. US society may still have tons of problems accepting that all people are created equal, but back then, they weren’t even thinking about blacks et al very much. They were quite happy to ostracize Italians, Irish, Catholics, etc, without batting an eye.

This is such a widely misunderstood book, by scholars as well as regulars.

Daisy was the victim of love. She would’ve married Jay while he was in the army. Also, Jay’s so-called symbolic “reaching” is nothing more than him trying to understand self love, to attain it, to unravel the “mystery! ” of it. But he never realizes he’s totally in love with himself, which is his biggest issue other than preying on Daisy’s real love.

And Nick ” Carraway” …. Care-a-way, care-a-way… What self-appointed moral man witnesses nakedly two married plotters sceam against a neighbor they like, or any person in serious need of legal, emotion aid, AND DOES NOTHING. Yeah, care a way, Nick, just not your way! And Come On!! who the hell doesn’t judge others….that’s the ENTIRE POINT OF EVERY BOOK AND LIFE.

WHAT preyed on Gatsby preys upon every person everywhere. Influences of life and choices we make because if them. Gatsby’s such an interesting, centralized , beloved character because he represents everyone’s apparent embracement of the childhood notion, ” we can have it all and make our own consequences, and if not, let’s see if I can manipulate time successfully. Gatsby’s us the full human demonstration of self love at all costs and quite deliberately finding a way disguise and masquerade and mutate and thus deny this very fact while simultaneously trying to make it MAGICAL AND MYSTICAL.

ARTISTS, from geniuses to so-called laypeople, are all simple people with very basic emotions. That’s where ALL starts. They are not Gods, nor do they desire misunderstanding. Frankly, they just wanna see if you have any common sense. Once you get passed that, all literature resembles EVERY aspect of life.

A terrific novel and not bad adaptation as a movie by DiCaprio, I thought! While some of the comments on here are a little excessive, there is much to be said for the symbolism in the book. I rather like the fact that ‘West Egg’ and ‘East Egg’ surely hints at questioning who is the ‘good egg’ and who is ‘the bad egg’. The place names are so unusual that this must be deliberate (‘bad egg’ has been around since at least 1855) and we’re left to wonder just what is good and bad here. No character comes out smelling of roses in this story, which – for me – makes the novel utterly compelling.

Well said, Ken. It’s the subtlety of the characterisation which makes it for me – I know a lot of critics and readers praise the prose style, but I think it’s the way Fitzgerald uses Carraway’s narration to reveal the multifaceted (and complex) nature of Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and even himself that is so masterly. I’ve just finished analysing the opening paragraphs of the novel and will post that up soon!

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The Great Gatsby

F. scott fitzgerald, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

The Great Gatsby: Introduction

The great gatsby: plot summary, the great gatsby: detailed summary & analysis, the great gatsby: themes, the great gatsby: quotes, the great gatsby: characters, the great gatsby: symbols, the great gatsby: literary devices, the great gatsby: quizzes, the great gatsby: theme wheel, brief biography of f. scott fitzgerald.

Historical Context of The Great Gatsby

Other books related to the great gatsby.

Full Title: The Great Gatsby
Where Written: Paris and the US, in 1924
When Published: 1925
Literary Period: Modernism
Genre: Novel
Setting: Long Island, Queens, and Manhattan, New York in the summer of 1922
Climax: The showdown between Gatsby and Tom over Daisy
Point of View: First person

Extra Credit for The Great Gatsby

Puttin' on the Fitz. Fitzgerald spent most of his adult life in debt, often relying on loans from his publisher, and even his editor, Maxwell Perkins, in order to pay the bills. The money he made from his novels could not support the high-flying cosmopolitan life his wife desired, so Fitzgerald turned to more lucrative short story writing for magazines like Esquire. Fitzgerald spent his final three years writing screenplays in Hollywood.

Another Failed Screenwriter. Fitzgerald was an alcoholic and his wife Zelda suffered from serious mental illness. In the final years of their marriage as their debts piled up, Zelda stayed in a series of mental institutions on the East coast while Fitzgerald tried, and largely failed, to make money writing movie scripts in Hollywood.

The Great Gatsby Analysis

The great gatsby.

Read an analysis of The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a short novel, just nine chapters, each built around a party scene — though the final “party” is, of course, a funeral.

The story itself is about a poor boy from a farming background who becomes fabulously wealthy. It is also a love story. Both those stories are fascinating but perhaps, at its deepest level, it is an examination of the American Dream that reaches a pessimistic conclusion. The accumulation of great wealth and the aspiration to win the lady end in tragedy because the Dream does not live up to what it promises. The concept of money, which is at the centre of the Dream is complex. There is a tension between “old money” and “new money,” represented in the novel by the towns of East Egg where the old rich, including the Buchanans, live, and the downmarket West Egg, where Gatsby’s mansion is. In the end Gatsby is killed as a result of the events they are all involved in, and the Buchanans survive unharmed by retreating into the privileged society that will always protect them

The story is underpinned by a rich pattern of symbolism. For example, Gatsby’s ambition, both to gain Daisy’s love and to make it into a privileged social setting, is symbolised by the green light at the end of the dock at Daisy’s house.

The industrial wasteland where George and Myrtle Wilson live, known as The Valley of Ashes, is a contrast to the green light. It’s a dumping ground for the refuse of the factories that are producing the gadgets and appliances filling the homes of the post-war generation as the economy booms. Rejected, failing people like the Wilsons live there, an underclass without hope, exploited by the privileged.

The huge billboard bearing the eyes of the occulist, Dr T J Eckleburg, tower over the dump. The eyes are the moral conscience, looking down, like God, witnessing the corruption all around. On another level, they advertise another man trying to make money out of the poor people who live there.

Reading The Great Gatsby is the total reading experience. Apart from its compelling story and memorable and interesting characters, it is written in prose that is probably the finest in all American literature – before and after its publication.

Fitzgerald’s style in this novel encompasses everything that prose is capable of – not only that but at the highest level: it is sophisticated while being ironic; it’s full of metaphors and figurative imagery and all the devices of poetic language to convey its dominant tone of nostalgia and loss. Looking back from Gatsby’s death near the end of the novel, it seems to be an extended elegy for Gatsby. As narrator Nick Carraway puts it, he has told this story about a man who has gained his respect in spite of being someone “who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.”

Nick describes Gatsby as elegant graceful and stylish in sentences that flow in musical cadences. Other characters are described in similar language while at the same time the author is exposing their unsavoury nature. That gives the exalted language a kind of irony and suggests ridicule rather than praise.

An example of that is the description of a Gatsby party in the language of the sophisticated, sober Nick. He describes the music, the colour, and the activity, creating a vivid, memorable picture. The guests are sophisticated people – powerful men, beautiful women, celebrities – but they become drunker and drunker, their sophistication evaporating as the night draws on. By the time the party ends many of them are blind drunk and incoherent. Their slurred and inelegant speech – “wonder’ff tell me where there’s a gas’line station” – is in great contrast to the language Nick uses to describe them: “The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath: already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.”

That is all one sentence, bound together by punctuation and conjunctions. It gives a vivid picture of the scene. Fitzgerald creates a strong sense of continual movement with words and phrases like” glide on,” “dissolve,” “wanderers,” “constantly changing,” “swell,” “form” – effortless movement, offering a view of youth and vitality celebrating their era, embracing it effortlessly with ceaseless motion.

The text has a highly evocative quality. Fitzgerald employs poetic devices to effect that. For example, the alliteration and repetition contribute to that in this passage where Nick and Tom meet Myrtle in the city. They are in an apartment and Nick imagines someone down below looking up at them through a window. “Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” “Within and without,” “enchanted,” “repelled” reflect Nick’s simultaneous restlessness and fascination with New York.

Nick’s metaphorical descriptions stand in contrast to the unsophisticated speech of the vulgar characters. Wilson tells Tom about his suspicion about his wife’s infidelity. “I just got wised up to something funny …. that’s why I been bothering you about the car.”

The actual text is short, only 50,000 words, but also like poetry, it is the compression of an enormous amount of content and meaning.

Ernest Hemingway, a friend of Fitzgerald, was not very kind to him and considered his first novel, The Beautiful and Damned , as greatly inferior. The very successful Hemingway thought that Fitzgerald would never make it as a writer. But after reading The Great Gatsby he said that he now had to “try to be a good friend” to Fitzgerald, and wrote “If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure that he could write an even better one”

Some would say that no American has written a better novel than The Great Gatsby .

That’s our take on The Great Gatsby themes. Make sense? Any questions? Let us know in the comments section below!

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Gatsby in the 2013 movie

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Your only partially right with what the movie is trying to show us about society. You missed the whole concept of a man doing everything in his power to earn what women want from men today…status money and power but yet even when the man achieves all of this she still stays with the powerful money man who supported her because love isn’t enough for women. Sadly the ending gets even worse he gives his life protecting a women who doesn’t truly want him she only wants comfort because she is giving in to her animal nature of a weak doe over being with the man who defender her, waited for her, dedicated his life to her and in the end all the women of his dreams got him was shot in the back as she shot him in the back repeatedly this is how what men have to look forward to today in this modern broken society like the “modern” broken society depicted in the movie as you stated in your synopsis sorry I’m not the best with typing but this is the raw truth of the movie everyone has missed

Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: Critical Reception and Visual Interpretation

The thesis explores how the literary status of Fitzgerald’s novel published in 1925 evolved from being dismissed to becoming a canonical work of American Literature after the death of its author. The role of criticism and adaptations and how they intertwined to popularize the novel among the academic elite and the general public is examined. Four critical studies in different decades of recent history are analyzed to show the different approaches to the novel as well as its relation to the American Dream. The thesis suggests that the four critical studies discussed reflect viewpoints impacted by the cultural and socio-economic factors that marked the decade of their appearance: Kermit Moyer (1973), Ross Posnock (1984), Ray Canterbery (1999), and Benjamin Shreier (2007). Their approaches demonstrate the many ways The Great Gatsby can be viewed and thus its richness as a text. The three film adaptations of the novel in turn depict directors’ take on the novel as well as exhibiting the limitations, predilections, and technical possibilities of the time of their production: Nugent’s (1949), Clayton’s (1974), and Luhrmann’s (2013). The controversial aspects of these adaptations as indicated by reviews and articles, which evaluate them as to how they present Gatsby and the American Dream, have increased the debate and the interest in the novel. Though the novel is located in the U.S. in the Roaring Twenties associated with the Jazz Age, it continues to speak to present audience by evoking issues related to class, mobility, ethics, and romance.

Related Papers

William Cain

IJRSS (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SOCIAL SCIENCES)

Viplav Kumar Mandal

This paper attempts to read Fitzgerald's epoch-making novel The Great Gatsby as a cultural discourse of super-charged times. The post First World War was a time of great social, economic, and cultural upheaval across the globe. The U.S. was not left untouched. This novel is a living and throbbing document of its time. Gatsby's rise and fall is only the upper turf of the story. The factors leading to his becoming what he became and the later course of events that ultimately destroy him make up for the subterranean part of the story. This paper tries to look into the economic aspect of the story alongside the emotional and social aspects as well.

Sharjeel Ashraf

The paper explores the corrupted idea of the American Dream in one of the greatest novels written on the topic, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Even though the pursuance of the American Dream stems from the idea of hard work and success that is pure, truthful, and just, Jay Gatsby's approach in achieving it leads to his demise. His relationships with other characters, particularly Tom Buchanan and Daisy Buchanan, were tainted because of the morally corrupted notion of the American Dream. This paper textually analyzes The Great Gatsby and explores that how Gatsby runs after a dream (Daisy) that he cannot achieve even after becoming financially wealthy, and how the corrupt ideals of the American Dream become the reason that he cannot fulfill his own dreams.

Journal of American Studies

Dora Tsimpouki

The American dream that excludes inequality among people through individual endeavor and merit has faced varied human flaws after World War I. Equal opportunity, egalitarianism, inclusiveness and social mass progress have been replaced by cynicism, selfishness, sexism, racism, disappointment, and easy money. Should the principles of the dream incite the use of corruption and fraudulous ways to reach a successful goal? Or should the upper class members prevent the other class from emerging in freedom and abide by the dream’s principles? This article observes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s depiction of the American characters in his novel The Great Gatsby. The partition of the characters of that novel into aristocrats and workers reveals the variation of the disruption of the American moral values due to increase in material. If the gap between the working class and the upper class keeps widening, the American dream would keep fading.

Joseph Vogel

Suleman Bouti

Gaurav Thakarar

Journal of Language and Literature

monica ghiotto

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Themes and Analysis

The great gatsby, by f. scott fitzgerald.

Within ‘The Great Gatsby,’ F. Scott Fitzgerald taps into several important themes. These include the American dream, and its decline, as well as wealth, class, and love.

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

‘ The Great Gatsby’ follows Nick Carraway , who meets the mysterious multimillionaire Jay Gatsby after moving to New York. He gets wrapped up in Gatsby’s dreams and his cousin’s difficult marriage, all while learning about the pitfalls of wealth and the truth of the American dream.

The Great Gatsby Themes

Wealth .

Wealth is one of the most important themes Fitzgerald’s characters contend with within The Great Gatsby . Specifically, he draws a contrast between the aristocracy, those with old money like Daisy and Tom, and those with new money, like Gatsby. They live different lives and consider one another in different lights. But, both types of wealth corrupt in the same way. As the money amasses, their consideration of other people decreases.

Fitzgerald provides a great example of this at the end of the novel when Daisy and Tom move away to a new home rather than attend Gatsby’s funeral or deal with the consequences. Instead, they use their money to keep other people at a distance and get whatever they want out of life.

The American Dream

This theme is central to Gatsby’s understanding of the world and the judgments Nick makes about the future at the end of the novel. It is a set of ideas that suggest that anyone who works hard can find success in the United States. Gatsby rose from poverty up to the level of a multi-millionaire. But, when it came to what he really wanted in life, he failed. He spent his whole life thinking that if he just made enough money, he’d be able to convince Daisy to love him, and he’d have everything he wanted. But, he couldn’t retrieve his relationship with Daisy, and his pursuit of it led to his death.

Love/ Relationships

There are a few different depictions of love and relationships in The Great Gatsby, and none of them are ideal. There is Gatsby’s unending love for Daisy, George’s love for his wife, Myrtle, Tom and Daisy’s relationship, and Nick’s relationship with Jordan. Gatsby’s goal to bring Daisy back into his life is one that’s built on an idealized image of the latter, one that fails to fulfill itself in reality.

Gatsby loves the idea of Daisy and thought of possessing her more than he does the person. The same can be said of Tom’s consideration for his wife. He wants to keep her as a commodity and as a symbol of his own status. But he doesn’t love her. He continually cheats on her and doesn’t attempt to hide it. Nick’s fleeting relationship with Jordan is emotionally distant. There isn’t enough emotion on either’s side for it to be anything other than a passing distraction.

Analysis of Key Moments in The Great Gatsby

Nick moves to West Egg.
Nick meets Gatsby and learns about his love for Daisy.
Nick helps reunite the two.
Daisy learns about Gatsby’s criminal dealings from Tom.
Daisy returns to Tom.
Daisy hits Tom’s mistress Myrtle with her car.
Gatsby decides to say he was the one driving the car.
Tom tells Myrtle’s husband George that it was Gatsby’s car that hit his wife.
George shoots Gatsby and then shoots himself.
Nick attends Gatsby’s small funeral.
Daisy and Tom move away.
Nick returns to Minnesota disgusted with what he’s seen of the upper classes.

Style, Tone and Figurative Language

The tone throughout The Great Gatsby is in part sympathetic, scornful, and judgmental, depending on the moment. The former is the primary tone when the novel comes to a close, and Nick considers the tragedy of Gatsby’s death and what he did and didn’t accomplish. The details of Gatsby’s parties, the relationship between the men and women there, and Nick’s own cousin, Daisy, and her husband, are all addressed with a more scornful/judgemental tone. Nick is amazed by much of what he sees, but he’s also appalled by how these men and women treat one another.

Fitzgerald’s style of writing is often wry, filled with figurative language and interesting imagery. Fitzgerald often uses long sentences, starting with one topic and ending with another. He uses sophisticated language and doesn’t back away from more lyrical passages, such as the final lines of the novel:

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

This final line is also a good example of how Fitzgerald uses figurative language. It’s an example of a metaphor comparing humankind’s desire to reach into the future and find a better life to a boat being beaten back by the current. Some of the other examples of figurative language in this novel include similes, symbolism, and personification. For example, in Chapter 2 when Fitzgerald uses the following lines:

But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic — their irises are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose.

This quote from The Great Gatsby is an example of personification. The eyes are described as looking down over everyone even though they’re on a sign.

Analysis of Symbols

The green light .

The green light is perhaps the most important symbol in The Great Gatsby. It sits at the end of Daisy’s dock, and Nick catches Gatsby staring at it towards the beginning of the novel. It represents the life Gatsby is trying to create for himself and the role Daisy plays in it. The light is guiding him into the darkness as the end of the novel reveals.

The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg

Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s eyes are another prominent symbol in the novel. They are a pair of eyes on a faint billboard over the valley of ashes. Fitzgerald personifies them (see above quote), turning them into God’s eyes. They watch the terrible events playing out below without intervening. They’re watching but remain empty.

What does Jay Gatsby symbolize?

He represents the American dream and its dissolution in the 1920s.

What the three main themes in The Great Gatsby?

The three main themes are the American dream, wealth, and love/relationships.

Why did nobody go to Gatsby’s funeral?

No one went because no one had a true connection to the man. The only people around him were those who were using him for his wealth. Once he died, he had no value to them.

What is the main message of The Great Gatsby?

The main message of the novel is that the American dream is a fantasy. No one can have everything. One might also consider the fact that wealth corrupts all those who obtain it as the main message.

How did Gatsby get rich?

He got rich through illegal means, including bootlegging and other deals with organized criminals.

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About Emma Baldwin

Emma Baldwin, a graduate of East Carolina University, has a deep-rooted passion for literature. She serves as a key contributor to the Book Analysis team with years of experience.

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The Great Gatsby

Introduction to the great gatsby.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the greatest American writers, wrote The Great Gatsby. It was first published on 10th April 1925 and did not win instant applause. However, later it became the most read American novel , read by a diverse range of audiences. As time passed, it impacted the American generations, proving an all-time bestseller and a masterpiece. The novel shows the regions of West Egg and East Egg near Long Island known for its prosperity during the Jazz Era after World War 1. The story revolves around the obsession of the millionaire, Jay Gatsby for a fashionable woman, Daisy. She is very popular among the military officers for her parties. On account of the exploration of a host of themes, the novel has been termed Fitzgerald’s magnum opus.

Summary of The Great Gatsby

The story of the novel, The Great Gatsby , revolves around a young man, Nick Carraway, who comes from Minnesota to New York in 1922. He is also the narrator of the story. His main objective is to establish his career in the bonds. Nick rents a house in West Egg on Long Island, which is a fictional village of New York. He finds himself living amidst the huge mansions of the rich and famous . Right across the water, there is a refined village of East Egg. Nick’s cousin Daisy and her wealthy husband Tom Buchanan live in that part of the village. Tom is known to be cruel, absurdly rich as well. One day Nick goes to meet Daisy and Tom for dinner. There, he meets Jordan Baker, Daisy’s friend. Daisy is a well-known golf champion. She tells him about Tom’s affair. Apparently, Tom has a mistress in New York City. Daisy secretly confesses to Nick that she is not happy with Tom. Once Nick returns to his house in West Egg, he sees his neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Jay is standing alone in the dark calling out to a green light across the bay. The place points to Tom’s and Daisy’s place.

After a few months, Tom introduces Nick to his mistress, Myrtle Wilson. Myrtle is married George Wilson, who is not as lively or joyful as Tom. According to Nick, George is “a valley of ashes”. He also compares George to an industrial wasteland supervised by Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. They meet her at the garage where George works as a repairman. Tom, Nick, and Myrtle go to her apartment in Manhattan. Myrtle’s sister and some other friends join them. As they are heavily drunk, they fall into an argument . Tom punches Myrtle in the nose when she talks about Daisy and insults her. Nick also wakes up in a train station.

A few months pass, Nick grows comfortable with the noises and lights of dazzling parties held at his neighbor Jay Gatsby’s house. Jay always has the famous and rich people gather on Saturday nights . There all the rich and famous enjoy Gatsby’s extravagant bar and enjoy listening to jazz orchestra. One day, Nick receives an invitation from Gatsby to one of these parties. There he meets Jordan and spends most of the evening. Nick notices that Jay is mostly absent during his parties. He overhears the guests talking about Gatsby’s dark past. Later, Nick meets him at the end of the party. While at first, he doesn’t know who Jay Gatsby was. Nick is properly introduced to Gatsby asking Jordan to speak privately. When Jordan returns she doesn’t share any details of the conversation between her and Jay Gatsby.

Nick becomes even more suspicious about this mystery character and decides to learn more about him through Jordan. Nick continues to see Jordan Baker. He also gets acquainted with Jay Gatsby at the same time. During one of the drives for lunch in Manhattan, Gatsby tries to dismiss the rumors that has been reaching Nick. Jay tells Nick that his parents were very wealthy people and were dead. He studied in Oxford and discharged as a war hero after World War 1. Nick doesn’t believe Jay at this point. At lunch, Nick is introduced to Gatsby’s business partner, Meyer Wolfsheim. Meyer is known to fix the World Series in 1919. (This character was based on a real person and a real event from the author’s time). Nick meets Jordan Baker. She reveals Nick about her conversation with Gatsby. Gatsby knew Daisy, Nick’s cousin five years before. While he lived in Louisville, Jay and Daisy were in love. When Jay left to fight in the war, Daisy married Tom Buchanan. Gatsby bought his current mansion on West Egg to be across the water to see Daisy from distance.

Gatsby request Nick to invite Daisy to his house so that he can meet her. After a few days Jay Gatsby, invited by Nick, meets Daisy over tea. Daisy is surprised to see Gatsby after five years gap. Initially, they are quiet and hesitant, making the meeting extremely awkward. Nick observes this and leaves them alone for some time. He believes that by giving them a little privacy, they might talk and sort things out. Surprisingly, when Nick returns, Jay and Daisy speak without any uneasiness in the environment. Jay Gatsby is beaming with happiness; and Daisy is crying happy tears. Later, they head to Jay Gatsby’s mansion. Gatsby begins to show all his rooms and artifacts to her.

Few days pass, with Daisy and Jay Gatsby meeting frequently, Tom comes to know about Daisy’s meeting with Gatsby. He doesn’t like it. One day, Tom unwillingly attends Jay Gatsby’s party with Daisy. Daisy feels uncomfortable at the party. She is disgusted by the bad behavior of the rich crowd at West Egg. Tom assumes that Gatsby has a business of selling goods illegally. He accuses Jay Gatsby at the party and also shares his frustration with Nick after the party. Gatsby tries to ignore all the fight and asks Daisy to leave Tom. He begs her to tell the truth to Tom that she does not love him. Gatsby asks Daisy to marry him after they separate. He confesses that he had never stopped loving Daisy.

Right after that incident, Jay Gatsby stops throwing his wild parties. Daisy visits him almost every afternoon. One day, Nick is invited for lunch by the Buchanans. Jay Gatsby and Jordan are also invited. During the lunch, Daisy compliments Gatsby in front of everyone. This also proves as a declaration of her love for Jay Gatsby. Tom also notices Daisy but chooses not to react. He requests them to come to the town. Daisy and Jat Gatsby go to Tom’s car. However, Tom takes Jay Gatsby’s car with Jordan and Nick. Tom stops for the fuel at George Wilson’s garage in the valley of ashes. Wilson breaks the news to Tom that he had been planning to go west of the city with his wife Myrtle to raise more money.

Hearing the news Tom is visibly mad and speeds towards Manhattan. He catches up with Daisy and Gatsby. They go to a parlor at the Plaza Hotel, while Tom is still disturbed by hearing George’s and Myrtle’s moving news. While having a drink Tom confronts Gatsby about his and Daisy’s relationship. Daisy tries her best to calm them down. However, Gatsby begs Daisy to reveal the truth of their love. When Tom continues to threaten Jay Gatsy, Daisy threatens to leave Tom. Out of prejudice, Tom tells them that he had been investigating Gatsby. He concludes that Jay Gatsby was selling illegal alcohol at drugstores in Chicago with Wolfsheim. Gatsby denies the allegations and tries to diffuse the situation. However, Daisy loses hope. They leave the Plaza, just as Nick turns 30, without celebrating his birthday.

While returning, Daisy drives Gatsby’s car. On the way they accidentally hit Myrtle. Just before the accident Myrtle and George had a severe argument. She runs toward the street thinking Tom is still driving Gatsby’s car. While Jay Gatsby and Daisy see Myrtle they don’t stop. Daisy is afraid to stop and is caught by a couple of witnesses. Tom who is following them from Plaza stops his car after seeing the accident scene and the crowd on the road. Tom is shocked and heartbroken after seeing Myrtle’s dead body in Wilson’s garage. Wilson reveals to Tom that a yellow car was responsible for the accident. Tom tells that the car was not his and leaves to East Egg while mourning. When Nick sees Jay Gatsby at the Buchanans’ mansion he comes to know that Daisy caused the accident. However, Gatsby tells him that he will take the blame if his car is found. Jay also decides to be at Daisy’s house as a guard to protect her from Tom.

The next day, Nick asks Gatsby to disappear, as his car will eventually be traced. Gatsby refuses to leave. He reveals the truth of his past to Nick. Jay Gatsby was from a poor farming family and met Daisy while serving in the army in Louisville. As he was too poor to marry, he did use illegal methods to gain his wealth after the war. Proving that Tom was correct.

Nick returns for work unwillingly. Gatsby desperately waits for Daisy’s call. After a few days, George Wilson visits Tom at the East Egg. He tells him that Gatsby killed Myrtle. After revealing the new George barges into Gatsby’s mansion. Gatsby is relaxing by his pool when George shoots him and then turns the gun on himself. Nick is shocked and arranges Jay Gatsby’s funeral. Nick and Jay Gatsby’s father is the only audience at the funeral. Eventually, Daisy and Tom leave Long Island without revealing their new address. Nick returns to the Midwest and realizes that his life in the East was never good.

Major Themes in The Great Gatsby

The American Dream: The novel, Great Gatsby , presents the theme of the American Dream through its character of Jay Gatsby. When Nick meets him, he overemphasizes his lifestyle. He even desires to be in his parties and introduces him to Daisy when a chance arises. Therefore, Gatsby meets Daisy and tries to revive his past love, seeing that he has achieved fame through his riches and would get her now . However, Daisy disappears from his life after the accident. Nick with his American dream is the only friend in the end who arranges his funeral. The frequent uses of business and business jargon show the theme of the American Dream.
Home: The novel shows its theme of home through different characters. Nick leaves home and returns when he learns about the importance of home distinctively different from the mansions of East Egg and West Egg. Jay Gatsby, too, learns that mansions do not become home of a person. That is why he reverts to Daisy to set up a home but fails in his attempts.
Money: Money is not only an important theme but also a theme in the novel. Money brings a few characters close to each other. The discussion of places like East Egg and West Egg and new and old money shows that money makes the mare go for Nick, Tom, Daisy as well as Gatsby. However, by the end, Nick comes to know that money is not everything as he performs funeral rites of Gatsby alone with nobody else besides his dead body.
Materialism: Materialism is another significant theme of The Great Gatsby in that it shows its ravages and destruction where it is desired to be the most important value. The lush and extravagant parties, the mysterious and rich lifestyles, and extravagant shows of wealth do not go side by the side the sincerity of relations in the human world. Gatsby’s lifestyle attracts others, but nobody knows his mental condition, though, he fails to win Daisy by the end of the novel when meets his end, as she is already married.
Past: Past is a constant theme in the novel that Gatsby, Tom, and Daisy want to leave their past but it constantly haunts them. Gatsby has made remarkable progress in his life. Daisy and Tom have caused quite a scandal in their previous city of Chicago, the reason that they are running away from it. Jordan Baker also tries to bury her past life. Nick then clearly explains it to Daisy that he cannot bring back the past.
The hollowness of Upper Class: The novel shows the hollowness of the elite class or upper strata of the American society through the characters of Jay Gatsby as well as the region of East Egg as corrupt and devoid of the moral and ethical framework but West Egg as the social fabric tied in a morality. When Nick learns about Gatsby and Daisy, he reaches the conclusion by the end that all is rotten to the core.
Life and Death: Fitzgerald has presented the theme of life and death through the parties that are being thrown in the West Egg region in New York and through the character of Nick and Gatsby. However, it is Owl Eyes that shows the looming shadow of death amid life. Death is shown to end Jay Gatsby’s life of extravagance.
Love and Marriage: The novel shows two strained marriages of Tom with Daisy and Myrtle Wilson with George Wilson as bad examples of marriages. Although Nick and Gatsby are in search of love and they find it to some extent, this is not the real love but just a type of tender curiosity in Nick’s words.
Class: The novel shows the class system through different characters such as Gatsby represents the upper strata, for Nick is seeking to join this class despite his being form the middle class. The incompatibility of the marriage of Myrtle with George shows this class difference.

Major Characters in The Great Gatsby

Jay Gatsby: James Gatz or Jay Gatsby is the main protagonist , known for his mysterious past and extravagant lifestyle. His parties and mansion located in West Egg make other characters seek his attention and be invited to his parties. Later, he reveals the truth to Nick that he was a young man from a poor family and lived in Dakota. He made fortune after serving in WWI in the army and knew Daisy then. His love, though, stays unrequited until the end as Daisy gave importance to money. Though he amasses a vast fortune. George Wilson kills him by the end of having an affair with his wife. Though in reality, Daisy commits the crime and kills Myrtle, but Jay takes the blame upon himself.
Nick Carraway: Nick is the narrator of the story. He is from a rich family from Minnesota and wants to join the upper class of the society by joining the bond business in New York. Hence, he moves to the city. Nick is seen as an honest and responsible man. He joins Gatsby and Buchanan’s just to experience the East Egg society. Once, Nick gets close to Gatsby, he comes to know the truth and stands by him. When Gatsby is killed by George, he arranges his funeral and leaves East Egg for good.
Daisy Buchanan: Daisy Buchanan is Tom’s wife. In the past, she was with Gatsby while he was serving in World War 1. She leaves Jay Gatsby because of his financial status. Through her cousin Nick, she meets Jay Gatsby after five years. She kills Myrtle in an accident. She leaves Gatsby when takes the blame on himself to protect her. She is quite selfish and immature.
Tom Buchanan: Tom is a former soccer player from Yale and comes from an elite family. However, the brutal and deeply insecure, the reason that he often displays racism. He is dominating over his wife, Daisy, and condemns her for meeting Gatsby. While he disapproves, Daisy’s choice, he has a mistress, Myrtle. Tom is also a bully and a narcissist.
Jordan Baker: Jordan is a strong woman and Daisy’s old friend who once won golf tournament through deceit. However, unlike her friend, she is quite cold in manners and does not respond to Nick’s advances.
Myrtle Wilson: Myrtle is Tom’s mistress and promiscuous woman. She crosses social boundaries if she finds a chance. In her desperation, she marries George, the owner of a garage, but continues her affair with Tom. When she picks up a fight with her husband over the move, she runs to the street where speeding Daisy accidentally kills her. though Gatsby takes the blame.
George Wilson: A poor and lazy garage owner, George Wilson. He married ambitious Myrtle but faces agony and mental torture over her affair with Tom. He later murders Gatsby assuming Gatsby had killed Myrtle by accident.
Meyer Wolfsheim: Meyer is Gatsby’s colleague and famous for his involvement in the world of crime and fixing series. He is a mixture of morality and the criminal world and offers condolence on the death of Gatsby.
Dan Cody: Dan is one of those men who exploited the Gold Rush and won riches. Gatsby became his disciple and learned the art of making money but didn’t receive anything else. Though he left some fortune for Gatsby, it was taken away by his previous wife.

Writing Style of The Great Gatsby ‎

Fitzgerald applies wry and elegiac which also includes sophisticated style in The Great Gatsby . The language, though, creates a sense of loss and nostalgia , becomes poetic, at times, loaded with figurative images. In one way, it seems to be an extended elegy that laments the corruption of a whole class merely for the abstract concept of a dream which is rotten to the core on account of greed, avariciousness, and lasciviousness that it breeds. However, when the novel shows metaphorical language and elaborate images, it seems highly sophisticated. Fitzgerald is an expert writer and knows where to apply what type of language.

Analysis of Literary Devices in The Great Gatsby

Action: The main action of the novel comprises Jay Gatsby yearning for Daisy’s affection. He took the blame for the accident and faced sequences as George Wilson kills him. The rising action comprises the reunion of Daisy and Gatsby, while the falling action is the death of Gatsby or maybe his final funeral rites.
Allegory : The Great Gatsby shows some strands of allegory in the character of Gatsby who is a symbol of something to be re-created through dreams . However, as a representative figure of every common American, Gatsby seems to have made it an allegory, for his dream of winning his love after having won a Gothic mansion and name in the parties proves a miserable failure.
Antagonist : Tom Buchanan is the antagonist of the novel, The Great Gatsby . He is not only an imposing figure but also a dominating man who represents obstacles that stand between a man’s desire and his attempts to reach his goal. He does not let Daisy and Gatsby meet to fulfill their desire of marriage after loving each other.
Allusion : Some of the allusions used in The Great Gatsby are such as a reference to Midas, a Greek legend , another to Morgan, an American financier, to Maecenas, an art patron of Rome, to Oxford, a university in England and to Rockefeller, a self-styled billionaire of the 19 th century.
Conflict : There are two types of conflicts in the novel, The Great Gatsby . The first one is the external conflict going on between Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, the husband of Daisy how to dodge him to win his wife. The internal conflict goes in the mind of Gatsby about himself, about his love and renewal of relationship with Daisy.
Characters: The Great Gatsby presents both static as well as dynamic characters. The young man, Nick Carraway, the narrator is a dynamic character . He not only sees the entire situation but also sees his friends and near and dear ones in a wider perspective . His opinion also changes from good to bad by the end of the novel about different characters such as Tome, Jordan, and Daisy. However, Gatsby and Tom stays the same and does not show any change. Therefore, they are static characters .
Climax : The climax in The Great Gatsby takes place when the group of all of them is coming back from New York and Myrtle is killed by Gatsby. Then Gatsby shows greatness by taking the blame and getting killed by George.
Foreshadowing : The novel, The Great Gatsby , shows several examples of foreshadowing . Its fourth chapter shows the first such example when Nick sees that the gambler Wolfsheim is the friend of Gatsby which points to the means of his riches. The second example occurs when Jordan asks Nick that Gatsby wants to meet Daisy which clearly shows that he is going to rekindle his old love.
I’m p-paralysed with happiness.’ (Chapter-1)
The Flowers were unnecessary, for at two o’clock a greenhouse arrived from Gatsby’s, with innumerable receptacles to contain it. (Chapter-5)
‘FIer family is one aunt about a thousand years old. (Chapter-1) All these three examples show good use of the literary device of hyperbole .
If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. (Chapter-1)
He wouldn’t say another word. His correctness grew on him as we neared the city. We passed Port Roosevelt, where there was a glimpse of red-belted ocean-going ships, and sped along a cobbled slum lined with the dark, undeserted saloons of the faded-gilt nineteen-hundreds.” (Chapter-4)

In the first example, the passage shows the description of a person while the second presents the description of Port Roosevelt. In both descriptions, Fitzgerald has used senses of sound, sight, and hearing extensively.

Metaphor : The Great Gatsby shows various metaphors throughout the novel. For example, 1. The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens. 2. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of saltwater in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. 3. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” The first metaphor compares the law to an animal , the second the places to eggs, and the last compares life to a voyage.
Mood : The novel, The Great Gatsby, shows a very serious mood that depicts pessimism and vapidity along with uselessness of the riches. It also becomes somber at the ugliness of the Valley of Ashes and the sad at the death of Gatsby.
Motif : The most important motifs of the novel, The Great Gatsby, are judgment, infidelity, and wealth which occur recurrently in the storyline.
Narrator : The novel, The Great Gatsby , has been narrated in a first-person narrative by Nick Carraway. It presents impressions of the place, society, and events from his personal point of view .
Half a dozen fingers pointed at the amputated wheel. (Chapter-3)
Blinded by the glare of the headlights and confused by the incessant groaning of the horns , the apparition stood swaying for a moment before he perceived the man in the duster. (Chapter-3)
The Dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away trying to touch what was no longer tangible. (Chapter-7) The first example shows fingers, second apparition, and the third dead dream as if they have lives of their own.
Protagonist : Although it seems that Nick Carraway is the protagonist, yet he is not. He is only the narrator. It is Jay Gatsby who is the real protagonist of the novel. It is because he demonstrates greatness by the end by telling truth to Nick, taking the blame on himself, and getting killed.
Paradox : The Great Gatsby, at the deep level, shows that Gatsby is a person of many paradoxes. He idealizes the American Dream and has become a gentleman to be liked. However, he has left this world with a single friend at his funeral.
Rhetorical Questions: The novel shows the use of rhetorical questions in several places. For example, 1. What could you make of that, except to suspect some intensity in his conception of the affair that couldn’t be measured? 2. Who wants to go to town?’ demanded Daisy insistently. The first example shows the use of a rhetorical question posed by Nick that he does not want an answer. The second shows the same used by Daisy.
Theme : A theme is a central idea that the novelist or the writer wants to stress upon. The novel, The Great Gatsby , not only shows class, society, American Dream, and mortality but also demonstrates loneliness and the impacts of riches or wealth.
Setting : The setting of the novel, The Great Gatsby , is the city of New York and its Long Island with two fictional towns East Egg and West Egg.
Simile : The novel shows good use of various similes. For example, 1. Instead of being the warm center of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe. (Chapter-1) 2. They (bonds) stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint. (Chapter-1)
The first simile compares the Middle West to a ragged edge, while the second compares the gold to new money.
Symbol: The Great Gatsby shows various symbols such as the green light, the clothes of Gatsby, and the Valley of Ashes as well as his car which shows that it is due to the new money that he has earned. Even the East Egg and West Egg or symbols of capitalism and materialism.
Irony : The novel shows irony in that, though, Gatsby is the center of attention of the parties, nobody shows up at his funeral except one person. The second irony is that Gatsby shows shyness when meeting Daisy despite his mundane success. The third example of irony is that Myrtle wants to die at the hands of Tom but it is Daisy who becomes her killer, for she was driving the car.

The Great Gatsby Quotes
The Great Gatsby Symbolism
Letter to My Great, Great Grandchild
Behind Every Great Man There Is A Great Woman
To Be Great is to Be Misunderstood
The Great Unwashed
Great Expectations
The Great Storm
Great Expectations Quotes
Great Expectations Characters
10 Great Metaphors in R&B Songs
10 Great Metaphors from Popular Music
Top 6 Great Metaphors in Presidential Speeches
After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes
Great Metaphor Examples for Kids
Great Allegorical Poem Examples
10 Great Metaphors from Popular 2000’s Songs
10 Great Metaphors from Popular Disney Songs
10 Great Metaphors from Popular 1960s’ Songs
10 Great Metaphors from Popular 1970’s Songs
10 Great Metaphors from Popular 1980’s Songs
10 Great Metaphors from Popular 1990’s Songs
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald

critical thinking and analysis for the great gatsby

ELA Brave and True by Marilyn Yung

The Great Gatsby: A Critical Thinking Reader’s Guide

The Jazz Age Journal

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is such a multilayered and evergreen text! I’ve read it myriad times, and — I’m sure you can relate — I discover a new idea or noticing every time I revisit it. It’s no wonder that this book is such a popular read for American Literature classrooms.

And yes, I can foresee the day when this novel may be challenged for its lack of diversity, its chauvinism, and its other problematic themes. I have a feeling, however, that this novel will fare well in those discussions. After all, literature is a record of history and Fitzgerald captured the mood and morés of 1920s America faithfully.

There’s so much Gatsby-ness in Gatsby! With that observation, I guess I’m really acknowledging JUST HOW MUCH is in this book. Sure, there are the plot and storyline, there are the literary allusions, there’s the vocabulary, and of course, since it’s Fitzgerald, there are those absolutely beautiful sentences.

Beyond comprehension questions and locating textual evidence, how do we help students keep up with everything? That was my quandary last fall when I started my Gatsby unit in December. (Yes, December. More on that seemingly weird timing in a later post. It worked out well, btw.)

So I made a “reader’s guide, so to speak, and it worked well to help students grasp all the goodness out of The Great Gatsby . My version from last fall looked like this:

Anyway, I’ve just re-designed this resource and I hope you like the changes I’ve made to give students a more comprehensive experience of The Great Gatsby .

To see this item in my website shop, please visit here . To see this item on TpT, please visit here.

Scroll through the slideshow below to see the cover page, the Jazz Age Journal pages for chapters 1-6, and one page of the key. Obviously, there are pages for chapter 7-9, plus another page of the key and a teacher direction sheet.

During reading and after reading

I designed this resource to help students have a better reading experience DURING the book and AFTER as well. The info they record as they read will help them understand the book in the moment, and will also come in handy for your end-of-unit project. Whether you assign hexagonal thinking maps, beautiful sentence projects, TQE discussion assessments, or traditional literary analyses, these pages will help students remember the details of the book for the necessary later projects you assign.

As for grading…

I mainly checked my students’ pages for completion and effort. Here’s how I “graded” these: I made each journal page worth sixteen points. Here’s how that broke down:

comprehension questions: 4 pts
main events of chapter: 3 pts
TQE (students wrote down one, i.e. either a T, a Q, or an E): 3 pts
vocabulary word: 2 pts
beautiful sentence: 2 pts
important quote: 2 pts

Overall, my Jazz Age Journal was a good accountability tool that helped students progress through the book efficiently.

Here’s how it works

The Jazz Age Journal includes one page for each chapter. There are boxed areas on each page for students to fill out as they read or listen to the text.

These boxed areas have students record:

the main events of the chapter (to help kids remember what happens to whom and when)
a new vocabulary word (If my kids wrote small, they were able to write a brief definition as well.)
a thought, question, or an epiphany (I asked students to just record one of these per journal page. Also, these were handy for getting whole class or group discussions going!)
a beautiful sentence (After all, it IS Fitzgerald!)
an important or especially significant quote and its page number (so students can easily locate it if needed for a later culminating activity)

Each page also contains the following:

five comprehension questions. I asked my students to write their answers on the back of the sheet.
three to four illustrations or photos that connect to the chapter. I have intentionally left these without captions so students ponder the connection. Some of them are really obvious (the man with “owl eyes”), but there are some that aren’t (Queensboro Bridge from chapter 4 or Radcliffe Camera from Oxford University, etc). I hope these images spur questions from your students for further research and/or discussion.

Final notes about how I used this

After grading and returning the pages to students, I asked them to keep them until we were finished with the book, so they could utilize them to better recall various parts of the novel as they worked on their culminating projects, which this year were hexagonal thinking maps. Read about my first go at hexagonal thinking and The Great Gatsby here .

Eventually, I may try beautiful sentence projects and if that’s the case, these journal pages will be ready to go with one beautiful sentence recorded from each chapter.

I really hope you enjoy this resource!

Please let me know how it goes! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me by leaving a reply below or on my Contact page or emailing me at [email protected].

In addition, check out my gradually growing shop on this website. There are just a handful of resources on it right now, but check back for more soon.

You will also notice that my site is easier to navigate than in the past. For example, if you click on the blog menu at the top of this page, you will see posts arranged by category. For more Gatsby posts and ideas, drop down to find a page that features all my Gatsby-related posts or click on the The Great Gatsby box below. Have a great July!

Need a new poetry idea?

Enter your email below and I’ll send you this PDF file that will teach your students to write Treasured Object Poems , one of my favorite poem activities. I know your students will enjoy it!

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Featured photo at top of post by Antonio Grosz on Unsplash

Published by Marilyn Yung

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, best summary and analysis: the great gatsby, chapter 6.

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Chapter 6 of The Great Gasby is a major turning point in the novel: after the magical happiness of Gatsby and Daisy's reunion ins Chapter 5, we start too see the cracks that will unravel the whole story. Possibly because of this shift in tone from buildup to letdown, this chapter underwent substantial rewrites late in the editing process , meaning Fitzgerald worked really hard to get it just right because of how key this part of the book is.

So read on to see how it all starts to fall apart in our full The Great Gatsby Chapter 6 summary. Gatsby and Daisy each try to integrate into the other one’s life, and both attempts go terribly. Gatsby can’t hang with the upper crust because he doesn’t understand how to behave despite his years crewing a millionaire’s yacht, and Daisy is repulsed by the vulgar rabble at Gatsby’s latest party. Recipe for eventual disaster? Absolutely.

Quick Note on Our Citations

Our citation format in this guide is (chapter.paragraph). We're using this system since there are many editions of Gatsby, so using page numbers would only work for students with our copy of the book. To find a quotation we cite via chapter and paragraph in your book, you can either eyeball it (Paragraph 1-50: beginning of chapter; 50-100: middle of chapter; 100-on: end of chapter), or use the search function if you're using an online or eReader version of the text.

The Great Gatsby : Chapter 6 Summary

A reporter shows up to interview Gatsby. He is becoming well known enough (and there are enough rumors swirling around him) to become newsworthy. The rumors are now even crazier: that he is involved with a liquor pipeline to Canada, that his mansion is actually a boat.

The narrative suddenly shifts timeframes, and future book-writing Nick interrupts the story to give us some new background details about Gatsby. Jay Gatsby’s real name is James Gatz. His parents were failed farmers. He is an entirely self-made man, so ambitious and convinced of his own success that he transformed himself into his version of the perfect man: Jay Gatsby. Before any of his eventual social and financial success, he spent his nights fantasizing about his future.

James Gatz met Dan Cody, a copper and silver mine millionaire, on Cody’s yacht on Lake Superior. Cody seemed glamorous, and Cody liked Gatz enough to hire him as a kind of jack-of-all-trades for five years. They sailed around, indulged Cody’s alcoholism, and Gatz learned how to be Jay Gatsby. Cody tried to leave him money in his will, but an estranged wife claimed it instead. Nick tells us that Gatsby told him all of these details later, but he wants to dispel the crazy rumors.

The narrative flips back to the summer of 1922. After a few weeks of trying to make nice with Jordan’s aunt (who controls her money and directs her life), Nick returns to Gatsby’s house.

Tom Buchanan and an East Egg couple who has met Gatsby before stop by while horseback riding. It’s unclear why – for a quick drink maybe? Tom has no idea who Gatsby is, but Gatsby goes out of his way to remind him that they met at a restaurant a few weeks ago ( in Chapter 4 ), and to tell him that he knows Daisy. Gatsby invites them to stay for supper.

The lady of the couple disingenuously invites him over to her dinner party instead. Gatsby agrees. Nick follows the guests out and overhears Tom complaining that Gatsby has clearly misread the social cues – the woman wasn’t really inviting him for real, and in any case, Gatsby doesn’t have a horse to ride.

Tom also wonders how on earth Daisy could have met Gatsby. The three leave without Gatsby, despite the fact that he accepted the invitation to go with them.

The next Saturday, Tom comes with Daisy to Gatsby’s party. Nick notes that with them there, the party suddenly seems oppressive and unpleasant.

Gatsby takes them around and shows them the various celebrities and movie stars that are there. Tom and especially Daisy are somewhat star-struck, but it’s clear that to them this party is like a freak show – where they are coming to stare at the circus, and where they are above what they are looking at.

Gatsby and Daisy dance and talk. Tom makes see-through excuses to pursue other women at the party. Daisy is clearly miserable.

While Gatsby takes a phone call, Daisy and Nick sit at a table of drunk people squabbling about their drunkenness. Daisy is clearly grossed out by the party and the people there.

When the Buchanans are leaving, Tom guesses that Gatsby is a bootlegger, since where else could his money be coming from? Daisy tries to stick up for Gatsby, saying that most of the guests are just party crashers that he is too polite to turn away. Nick tells Tom that Gatsby’s money comes from a chain of drug stores. Daisy seems reluctant to go, worried that some magical party guest will sweep Gatsby off his feet while she’s not there.

Later that night, Gatsby worries that Daisy didn’t like the party. His worry makes him tell Nick his ultimate desire: Gatsby would like to recreate the past he and Daisy had together five years ago. Gatsby is an absolutist about Daisy: he wants her to say that she never loved Tom, to erase her emotional history with him (and with their daughter, probably!). Nick doesn't think that this is possible.

Gatsby tells Nicks about the magical past that he wants to recreate. It was encapsulated in the moment of Gatsby and Daisy’s first kiss. As soon as Gatsby kissed Daisy, all of his fantasies about himself and his future fixated solely on her.

Hearing this description of Gatsby’s love, Nick is close to remembering some related phrase or song, but he can’t quite reach the memory.

Key Chapter 6 Quotes

The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God--a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that--and he must be about His Father's Business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty. (6.7)

Here is the clearest connection of Gatsby and the ideal of the independent, individualistic, self-made man – the ultimate symbol of the American Dream . It’s telling that in describing Gatsby this way, Nick also links him to other ideas of perfection.

First, he references Plato’s philosophical construct of the ideal form – a completely inaccessible perfect object that exists outside of our real existence.
Second, Nick references various Biblical luminaries like Adam and Jesus who are called “son of God” in the New Testament – again, linking Gatsby to mythic and larger than life beings who are far removed from lived experience. Gatsby’s self-mythologizing is in this way part of a grander tradition of myth-making.

Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy's running around alone, for on the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby's party. Perhaps his presence gave the evening its peculiar quality of oppressiveness--it stands out in my memory from Gatsby's other parties that summer. There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-colored, many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn't been there before. Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had no consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at it again, through Daisy's eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment. (6.60)

What for Nick had been a center of excitement, celebrity, and luxury is now suddenly a depressing spectacle. It’s interesting that partly this is because Daisy and Tom are in some sense invaders – their presence disturbs the enclosed world of West Egg because it reminds Nick of West Egg’s lower social standing. It’s also key to see that having Tom and Daisy there makes Nick self-aware of the psychic work he has had to do to “adjust” to the vulgarity and different “standards” of behavior he’s been around. Remember that he entered the novel on a social footing similar to that of Tom and Daisy. Now he’s suddenly reminded that by hanging around with Gatsby, he has debased himself.

But the rest offended her--and inarguably, because it wasn't a gesture but an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented "place" that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village--appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand. (6.96)

Just as earlier we were treated to Jordan as a narrator stand-in , now we have a new set of eyes through which to view the story – Daisy’s. Her snobbery is deeply ingrained, and she doesn’t do anything to hide it or overcome it (unlike Nick, for example). Like Jordan, Daisy is judgmental and critical. Unlike Jordan , Daisy expresses this through “emotion” rather than cynical mockery. Either way, what Daisy doesn’t like is that the nouveau riche haven’t learned to hide their wealth under a veneer of gentility – full of the “raw vigor” that has very recently gotten them to this station in life, they are too obviously materialistic. Their “simplicity” is their single-minded devotion to money and status, which in her mind makes the journey from birth to death (“from nothing to nothing”) meaningless.

He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: "I never loved you." (6.125)

Hang on to this piece of information – it will be important later. This is really symptomatic of Gatsby’s absolutist feelings towards Daisy . It’s not enough for her to leave Tom. Instead, Gatsby expects Daisy to repudiate her entire relationship with Tom in order to show that she has always been just as monomaniacally obsessed with him as he has been with her. The problem is that this robs her of her humanity and personhood – she is not exactly like him, and it’s unhealthy that he demands for her to be an identical reflection of his mindset.

"I wouldn't ask too much of her," I ventured. "You can't repeat the past."

"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!"

He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.

"I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said, nodding determinedly. "She'll see."

He talked a lot about the past and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was. . . (6.128-132)

This is one of the most famous quotations from the novel. Gatsby’s blind faith in his ability to recreate some quasi-fictional past that he’s been dwelling on for five years is both a tribute to his romantic and idealistic nature ( the thing that Nick eventually decides makes him “great” ) and a clear indication that he just might be a completely delusional fantasist. So far in his life, everything that he’s fantasized about when he first imagined himself as Jay Gatsby has come true. But in that transformation, Gatsby now feels like he has lost a fundamental piece of himself – the thing he “wanted to recover.”

Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something--an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man's, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever. (6.135)

Just as Gatsby is searching for an unrecoverable piece of himself, so Nick also has a moment of wanting to connect with something that seems familiar but is out of reach . In a nice bit of subtle snobbery, Nick dismisses Gatsby’s description of his love for Daisy as treacly nonsense (“appalling sentimentality”), but finds his own attempt to remember a snippet of a love song or poem as a mystically tragic bit of disconnection. This gives us a quick glimpse into Nick the character - a pragmatic man who is quick to judge others (much quicker than his self-assessment as an objective observer would have us believe) and who is far more self-centered than he realizes.

Chapter 6 Analysis

Let's work to connect this chapter to the larger strands of meaning in the novel as a whole.

Overarching Themes

The American Dream . It’s not a coincidence that in the same chapter where we learn about James Gatz’s rebirth as Jay Gatsby, we see several other versions of the same kind of ambition that propelled him:

A reporter on the make follows a hunch that Gatsby might turn out to be a story.
Nick spends weeks courting the aunt that controls Jordan’s life and money.
And in the deep background of the party, a movie star’s producer tries to take their relationship from a professional to a personal level.

Motifs: Alcohol. Despite his idolizing of Dan Cody, Gatsby learns from his mentor’s alcoholism to stay away from drinking – this is why, to this day, he doesn’t participate in his own parties. For him, alcohol is a tool for making money and displaying his wealth and standing.

Society and Class. A very awkward encounter between a couple of West Egg, Tom, and Gatsby highlights the disparity between West Egg money and East Egg money. To Nick, the East Eggers are fundamentally different and mostly terrible:

For fun, they ride horses, while Gatsby’s main vehicle is a car.
They issue invitations that they hope will get declined, while Gatsby not only welcomes them into his home, but allows people to crash his parties and stay in his house indefinitely.
They accept hospitality without so much as a thank you, while Gatsby feels such a sense of gratitude that his thanks are overwhelming (for example, when he offers to go into business with Nick when Nick agreed to ask Daisy to tea).

This also demonstrates the fundamental inability to read people and situations correctly that plagues Gatsby throughout the novel - he can never quite learn how to behave and react correctly.

Immutability of Identity. However far Gatsby has come from the 17-year-old James Gatz, his only way of hanging on to a coherent sense of self has been to fixate on his love for Daisy. Now that he has reached the pinnacle of realizing all his fantasies, Gatsby wants to recapture that past self – the one Daisy was in love with.

Love, Desire, Relationships . No real life relationship could ever live up to Gatsby’s unrealistic, stylized, ultra-romantic, and absolutist conception of love in general, and his love of Daisy, in particular. Not only that, but he demands nothing less of Daisy as well. His condition for her to be with him is to entirely disavow Tom and any feelings she may have ever had for him. It’s this aspect of their affair that is used to defend Daisy from the generally negative attitude most readers have towards her character.

Daisy Buchanan's Motivations . Daisy’s reaction to Gatsby’s party is fascinating - especially if we think that Gatsby has been trying to be the “gold-hatted bouncing lover” for her. She is appalled by the empty, meaningless circus of luxury , snobbishly disgusted by the vulgarity of the people, and worried that Gatsby could be attracted to someone else there. Daisy enjoyed being alone in his mansion with him, but the more he displays what he has attained, the more she is repelled. The gold-hatted routine simply won’t work with her when the Gatsby she fell in love with was an idealistic dreamer who was overwhelmed by simply kissing her - not the seen-it-all keeper of a menagerie of celebrities and weirdos.

Crucial Character Beats

We find out Gatsby’s real origin story! He was born James Gatz and created a whole new persona for the future successful version of himself. When he was 17, Gatsby met a millionaire named Dan Cody, who taught him how to actually be Jay Gatsby.
Tom and Gatsby exchange words for the first time (they met once for a hot second in Chapter 3 , but didn’t speak)! They meet by coincidence when Tom’s friends bring him to Gatsby’s house in the middle of a horseback ride.
Tom and Daisy come to one of Gatsby’s parties, where Daisy is disgusted by the vulgar excess and Tom goes off to womanize.
Gatsby and Nick discuss the possibility of recreating the past, which Gatsby is apparently trying to do in order to be with Daisy. Gatsby thinks that reliving the past is definitely a completely real thing that normal people are able to do.

What’s Next?

Compare the description of this downer of a party with the much more fun-sounding one in Chapter 3 , and think about what changes when the party is seen through Daisy’s eyes rather than Nick and Jordan’s.

Check out the novel’s timeline to get the hang of what happens when in this chapter’s flashback.

Evaluate the Tom and Gatsby face to face matchup by contrasting these two seemingly opposite characters .

Move on to the summary of Chapter 7 , or revisit the summary of Chapter 5 .

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Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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Critical Insights: The Great Gatsby

Tags: 1 Volume 304 Pages Essays Offering Analysis by Top Literary Scholars Introductory Essay by the Editor Chronology of Author's Life Complete List of Author's Works Publication Dates of Works Detailed Bio of the Editor General Bibliography General Subject Index

This volume of criticism begins simply enough with essays that provide the reader with cultural, historical, comparative, and critical contexts for understanding Gatsby.

Additional resources include:

Chronology of F. Scott Fitzgerald's life
Works by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Bibliography
About the Editor
Contributors

View a Full List of Literature Titles

Additional titles of interest.

October 2010

Critical Insights: F. Scott Fitzgerald

In-depth critical discussions of his life and works - Plus complimentary, unlimited online access to the full content of this great literary reference.

Critical Insights: Crisis of Faith

Outstanding, in-depth scholarship by renowned literary critics; great starting point for students seeking an introduction to the theme and the critical discussions surrounding it.

Critical Insights: American Dream

Critical Insights: The American Dream offers thirteen original essays exploring the contexts and expressions of the dream as it is reflected in our imaginative literature.

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Great gatsby through the lens of feminism.

November 5, 2018

ENGL 100. Prof Whitley

The Great Gatsby through the lens of Feminism

Feminist criticism examines the ways in which literature has been written according to issues of gender. It focuses its attention on how cultural productions such as literature address the economic, social, political, and psychological oppression of women as a result of patriarchy. Patriarchal ideology has a deeply rooted influence on the way we think, speak, and view ourselves in the world, and an understanding of the pervasive nature of this ideology is necessary for a feminist critique. Demonstrating how people are a product of their culture, feminist criticism of The Great Gatsby reveals how the novel both supports and challenges the assumptions of a patriarchal society. The Great Gatsby displays various aspects of feminist philosophy by reflecting opposing principles of society’s model through very different female characters. By using a range of characters who respond to the figure of the New Woman, the novel shows how difficult it was to defy the norms of the time.

The novel paints a picture of America in the 1920’s. Before the war, women had no freedom, and they had to remain on a pedestal prescribed by the limits of male ideals. But now, women could be seen smoking and drinking, often in the company of men. They could also be seen enjoying the sometimes raucous nightlife offered at nightclubs and private parties. Even the new dances of the era, which seemed wild and overtly sexual to many, bespoke an attitude of free self-expression and unrestrained enjoyment. In other words, a “New Woman” emerged in the 1920’s. The appearance of the New Woman on the scene evoked a great deal of negative reaction from conservative members of society who felt that women’s rejection of any aspect of their traditional role would inevitably result in the destruction of the family and the moral decline of society as a whole.

The main female characters in the novel – Daisy, Jordan, and Myrtle – despite their many differences in class, occupation, appearance and personality traits, are all versions of the New Woman. All three display a good deal of modern independence. Only two are married, but they don’t keep their marital unhappiness a secret, although secrecy on such matters is cardinal in a patriarchal marriage. The women also challenge their assigned roles as females by preferring the excitement of night life to the more traditional employments of hearth and home. There is only one child among them, Daisy’s daughter, and while the child is well looked after by a nurse and affectionately treated by her mother, Daisy’s life does not revolve exclusively around her maternal role. Finally, all three women openly challenge patriarchal sexual taboo. Jordan engages in premarital sex, and Tom is even prompted to comment that Jordan’s family “shouldn’t let her run around the country in this way” (14). Daisy and Myrtle are both engaged in extramarital affairs, although Myrtle is more explicit about it than Daisy.

One of Daisy’s most memorable quotes is “All right, I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool – that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little food” (16). Daisy speaks of her hopes for her infant child, which reveals a lot about her character. Her bitterness and cynicism are signaled as she expresses this devastating critique of women’s position in society with reference to her daughter. It is clear that Daisy is a product of a social environment that, to a great extent, does not appreciate or value intellect in women. While Daisy conforms to a shared, patriarchal idea of femininity that values subservient and docile females, she also understands these social standards for women and chooses to play right into them. In this way, Daisy is a more subversive feminist.

Jordan is prescribed as a more masculine female character and seems to resist social pressure to conform to feminine norms. Not only does she have her own successful career, something that most women in the 1920’s did not have, but her career is in the male-dominated field of professional golf. She seems androgynous in her appearance and is described as having a “mustache of perspiration” and being “slender, small-breasted, with an erect carriage which accentuated by throwing her body backward at her shoulders like a young cadet.” The numerous masculine references in her physical descriptions through words such as ‘mustache,’ ‘erect,’ and ‘cadet’ demonstrate how she was not the typical 1920’s woman. She is also very honest and direct, where the patriarchal norm would be to remain submissive and quiet.

Myrtle’s characterization is more focused on her physicality, and she is more quickly undermined as artificial and even grotesque. Her death is undignified and stresses the destruction of her feminine aspects, with her left breast “swinging loose” and her mouth “ripped.” It is possible to argue that Myrtle is severely punished for her expression of sexuality, while Daisy, less overt about her illicit relationship with Gatsby, and a less sensual character altogether, is able to resume her life with Tom once she has left Gatsby.

The novel also abounds with minor female characters whose dress and activities identify them as incarnations of the New Woman, and they are portrayed as clones of a single, negative character type: shallow, revolting, exhibitionist and deceitful. For example, at Gatsby’s parties, we see insincere, “enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names” (44), as well as numerous narcissistic attention-seekers in various stages of drunken hysteria. We meet, for example, a young woman who “dumps” down a cocktail “for courage” and “dances out alone on the canvass to perform” (45) and a “rowdy little girl who gave way upon the slightest provocation to uncontrollable laughter” (51). The novel’s discomfort with the New Woman becomes evident through these characterizations.

In conclusion, the women in this text are shown to be victims of social and cultural norms that they could not change, demonstrating how influential culture can be in shaping the lives of individuals. There is an attempt to redefine society and culture in a new way by gender relations and the women in this novel actively try to change the social norms through their attitudes and actions. It becomes clear, however, that patriarchy is deeply internalized for these characters, demonstrating how powerful and often devastating this ideology can be.

Film, Freud and Fitzgerald: A Psychoanalytical Critique of The Great Gatsby and Jazz Age Values

Background and relevance.

Emeryville, a small city of less than 1,200 residents, rests in the near-center of the Bay Area, a region in California known for its diversity and social politics as much as its wide income gap. Emeryville’s location is unique in that it is both the literal and figurative center of the Bay Area with its high-income sister cities, like San Francisco and Marin, to the west and cities better known for their poverty and crime, like Oakland and Hayward, to the east. Due to this distinct location, Emeryville and its school district, is often called home to families and students from a variety of backgrounds.

Emery Unified School District contains only two schools. Anna Yates serves as the district’s K-8 school and Emery Secondary School, currently servicing students out of an interim building, as the 9-12 high school. The 2015-16 school year will see the opening of the Emeryville Center for Community Life (ECCL), which will serve as both a K-12 educational facility as well as a community center for the parents and families of Emeryville. Although plagued with set-backs and financial woes, many teachers and families alike are hoping the ECCL will be an opportunity to start fresh as many critics have often argued that Emeryville’s educational apparatus lacks the rigor, resources and instruction that is required to ensure that students have a competitive edge in a workforce that becomes more demanding each year.

Author Information and Areas for Professional Growth

After finishing my 4 th year teaching 11 th and 12 th grade English and 10 th grade World History I feel I have gained a degree of clarity and insight into my own teaching that I have lacked in prior years. Towards the end of the 2014-2015 school year I was able to take an honest inventory of my instructional capacity and pedagogy as an English teacher and make more informed decisions about instructional gaps that will need my attention before the next school year. As I will outline in more detail below I would like to focus on integrating critical lens theory into my curriculum. For this unit, I will use the psychoanalytical critical lens. Secondly, I would like to meet the needs of my visual learners by integrating film and video into the classroom as a both a viable central and supplemental tool for learning. I believe this unit will allow me to explore both of these areas for pedagogical growth and strengthen my English curriculum.

Student Population

Emery Secondary School’s student population has steadily declined from 220 students in 2013 to approximately 160 students as of 2015. According to school-ratings.com, ESS has an API score of 625 and state ranking of 1 (lowest) out of 10. On average, 65% of our students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Approximately 10% of students are classified as special education and internal benchmark testing has a significant number of 9 th and 10 th grade students reading and writing at a 5 th and 6 th grade level. With regard to student demographics, 63% of students identify as African American and 22% of students identify as Hispanic or Latino. Furthermore, 10% of students identify as Asian, many of whom are of middle-eastern descent.

Areas for Student Growth

Unfortunately, the areas in which students require the most growth are foundational to academic success. These areas include reading, writing and critical thinking. More specifically, the fact that students are often reading below grade level makes asking and expecting students to read classic literature, as suggested by the Common Core appendixes, difficult and arduous at times. With regard to composition, students’ macro-level writing is often sufficient, with students demonstrating a basic level of understanding of organization and structure. However, student trends in writing have highlighted a lack of command with grade level writing mechanics and conventions. Lastly, a majority of students often have difficulty with critical thinking and considering thought-provoking prompts. Students generally find more value in obtaining the right answer than in the process of attempting to answer the question. Furthermore, although students can identify evidence, many students frequently have a difficult time utilizing evidence as a means to formulate and defend a claim.

Application and Relevance

Academically, this unit is relevant to my students because it will allow me to improve reading comprehension by varying the medium in which classical literature is usually delivered. By utilizing the 2013 Baz Luhrmann film adaptation of The Great Gatsby along side the original text, I will also be strengthening my students’ ability to effectively analyze the literary elements presented in both text and film. Utilizing film along with text will not only improve student comprehension around the narrative of The Great Gatsby , but will also encourage critical thinking in that students will be exposed to a variety of similarities and differences between mediums that will stimulate discussion and deeper analysis of the form, function and intention of the author and director. More so, coupling the text and film with reading and viewing strategies will gives students a stronger foundation to record, organize and archive their discoveries as they develop arguments and opinion on the themes found in The Great Gatsby . Lastly, by introducing students to the psychoanalytical critical lens theory, students will develop an approach for which to analyze the characters, decisions, actions and desires in The Great Gatsby . This will thus strengthen students’ ability to make connections to the text on a personal, global and universal level.

Personally, examining The Great Gatsby and the value systems that are central its story will help students wrestle with their own questions surrounding values, morals, ethics and integrity. Students will become more intellectually mature as they make value judgments on characters and deconstruct the decisions, motivations and fears of each character. This process will not only encourage critical thinking, but also illustrate the complexity surrounding what it means to be successful, happy and ultimately, human.

Unit Overview

Primarily, this unit will center on students analyzing the 2013 film adaptation of The Great Gatsby directed by Baz Luhrmann using the psychoanalytical critical lens theory to consider the values and morality of its characters as products of the Jazz Age. By doing so, students will also learn about film techniques and how film can be a powerful visual medium in storytelling. Students will read the original text concurrently with segmented clips from The Great Gatsby film adaptation using reading and viewing strategies as a means to increase comprehension and content mastery. Students will learn how film techniques can reinforce text-based discoveries and inferences using, in this case, a psychoanalytical lens theory. Students will specifically be examining characters’ value systems, moral compass, motivations, fears, decisions, actions and destinies in an attempt to draw general conclusions about America in the 1920’s, as F. Scott Fitzgerald saw them, and, possibly, compare those findings to similar topics in contemporary America.

However, this unit is primarily concerned with the film component of a larger unit on The Great Gatsby . Thus, the strategies and approaches outlined in this narrative may be better relied upon to act as complementary to, rather than sufficient for, a text-based approach to The Great Gatsby in its own right.

The length of this unit should cover a span of seven to nine weeks, including assessments, in my 11 th grade English class. This includes the time required for students to read the entirety of the text. Students in my classroom will be given approximately four hours per week in block schedule classes that meet Monday, Wednesday and Thursday in intervals of 110 minutes.

Role of Film

For this unit, I will be segmenting the 2013 film adaptation of The Great Gatsby into “chapter scenes” to be used as a learning tool concurrently while students read the original text.

Specifically, students would use the film to consider a number of topics. For one, students will compare and contrast the characterization and character development as staged by the author and the director. They will examine the ways in which director Baz Luhrmann depicts Fitzgerald’s characters’ motivations, desires and fears along with their integrity, morality and values. What type of mechanisms, systems and form (specific to film) are used to accentuate and reinforce these traits? How are lighting, focus, camera position, color and direction used in each character? Furthermore, what is the significance of the director’s use of film technique and actor’s performance when considering these characters’ psychoanalytical dossier?

By using the Baz Luhrmann film adaptation of The Great Gatsby as a vehicle for analyzing the story’s themes and underlying social commentary, students will learn how film can be its own medium for effective storytelling. Secondly, using film in conjunction with text will increase students’ reading comprehension and content mastery surrounding The Great Gatsby and Critical Lens Theory.

Content Objectives

F. scott fitzgerald.

I believe it to be important for teachers to have some general background information on F. Scott Fitzgerald, especially his relationships and life experiences related to money and class, in order for teachers and students to make a more informed analysis of both the text and film adaptation of The Great Gatsby . With that in mind, I have provided a brief biography that will aim to give broader context for Fitzgerald’s jazz age drama and thus increase the teacher’s ability to guide students towards textual and real-world connections between author and story using the psychoanalytical critical lens model.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life can easily be seen to be as complicated as that of his novel’s characters. The novel was initially received with as much hype as disappointment. Ironically however, 90 years after its publishing in 1925, The Great Gatsby is arguably considered to be one of the most important narratives in modern American Literature. Critics often state that Fitzgerald’s own life experiences, romantic endeavors and financial woes informed many of his characters including those found in The Great Gatsby .

Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota to an upper middle class family on September 24 th , 1896. When he was a young boy, Fitzgerald’s family moved to New York where, despite having mild difficulties in school, he discovered a love for literature and eventually writing through the encouragement of his mother as well as his English teachers. During his college year, Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton University after being put on academic probation and joined the Army in 1917, the year the United States entered World War 1. Fitzgerald was never able to witness the excitement of battle but instead went on to meet the love of his life before the war had ended. However, Fitzgerald’s marriage to Zelda Sayne, the “golden girl” of the New York country club scene, would become a lifelong battle in its own right.

The engagement to Zelda sparked Fitzgerald to find a career in advertising as a means to meet the financial demands of his soon-to-be wife. But fortune and success did not find the couple easily and Zelda chose to break off the engagement. It was only after Fitzgerald published his first story, This Side of Paradise that the original plan for marriage was again considered. The stress and uncertainty that stemmed from his need to satisfy Zelda’s appetite for money and material luxuries were often represented thematically in Fitzgerald’s texts including The Great Gatsby . Nevertheless, the newlyweds had their daughter, Frances Scott Fitzgerald, in the fall of 1921. Soon thereafter the family moved to Paris.

Paris was a special time in Fitzgerald’s life as he cultivated a wonderful friendship with American novelist Earnest Hemmingway. The two were close there was friction over Hemmingway’s disdain for Zelda as he believed she pushed her husband to drink too frequently and, consequently, served as a distraction from his first love, writing. The marriage between novelist and golden girl became toxic as the years went on and was complicated further after Zelda developed schizophrenia and required hospitalization. Medical bills piled up and exhausted Fitzgerald financially. In response, he began writing as quickly and often as possible in an attempt to find relief from the financial and emotional stress plaguing his life.

The destructive effects of wealth and an elitist lifestyle coupled with Fitzgerald’s anxiety and internal pressure to be successful took a toll on the writer. After this low point, his relationship with Zelda dwindled, and he moved to Hollywood, where he became romantically involved with gossip writer Sheilah Graham. By 1939, Fitzgerald’s drinking had caught up with him and compounded a heart condition and rumored tuberculosis. In 1940, while being confined to a wheel chair, F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a heart attack.

Fitzgerald remains one of the greatest American novelists of the modern period as his profound yet cynical writing effectively mirrors the moral disintegration, hopeless romanticism and jazz age zeitgeist of his own high-pressured environment. The autobiographical aspect of his writing often tackled themes surrounding identity, class, moral ambiguity, financial hardship, and lost love. The Great Gatsby is a perfect example of this tendency and gives plenty of room for students to make inferences and draw conclusions between Gatsby’s tragic, materialistic, and morally ambiguous life and Fitzgerald’s.

Teachers and students should consider familiarizing themselves with the Jazz Age because it was both the setting of The Great Gatsby as well as the prevailing historical period during the time of its composition. Thus, I have attempted to summarize some of the major social and cultural points of interests concerning the Jazz Age, hoping teachers can use this contextual knowledge to deepen their own understanding of The Great Gatsby and, most importantly, feel academically equipped to encourage students to find their own connections between the narrative and the historical time period in which it was written and took place.

The Jazz Age in the United States was a cultural and political turning point in American history as it saw sweeping changes in social systems and power structures. What is referred to as The Jazz Age is the period between 1919 and 1929, virtually spanning the time from the Paris Peace Treaty ending World War 1 to the Black Tuesday stock market crash of 1929. In addition, most of the social phenomena and events that make up the Jazz Age, a term virtually synonymous with the Roaring Twenties, took place in the northeastern parts of the United States, in cities like New York City and Chicago. The Jazz Age is regarded as historically significant because there were a number of racial, sexual and gendered paradigm shifts that challenged the power dynamic and moral fabric of the United States.

Economically speaking, the Jazz Age was unique in that Americans were coming home to a financial and commercial boom that followed World War 1. Secondly, the 1920’s were the first time in American history where people living in cities outnumbered people living in farms or rural towns. Because of this shift, business and commerce increased dramatically and between 1920 and 1929 it is estimated that the nation’s wealth nearly doubled. Radios were being sold in record numbers, allowing people to tune in with one another and connect with the current of the times. Likewise, automobiles were selling quickly and giving people a sense of freedom.

The boom in automobile production also helped to facilitate The Great Migration. The Great Migration was a phenomenon that saw African Americans relocating in record numbers from the historically oppressive regions of the south to the more progressive a cities in the northeastern United States, where they found greater opportunities. As a consequence, African American culture quickly permeated throughout society, often to the dismay of traditional and more conservative white communities.

In addition to African American communities, women were also establishing their independence during the 1920s. In August of 1920 the 19 th amendment was ratified giving women the right to vote, a privilege that was conditionally given to African Americans some 50 years earlier. In addition, the advent of birth control gave women the opportunity to take agency over their bodies and thus, offer a degree of sexual freedom never before experienced, while a boom in domestic and household technologies gave many women time to explore other interests. From these changes in women’s lives, a new identity emerged known as the flapper girl, a woman who was known as much for her love of dancing as for her willingness to challenge gender norms. Flapper girls had a tendency to engage in worldly pleasures like alcohol and sexual promiscuity, unlike their conservative counter-parts. The flapper girl, like many others that were in tune with the times, found refuge in the perfect environment for such fun- the speakeasy.

In 1919, the 18 th Amendment was passed by the government as an attempt to curb the loosening of morality that seemed to be accompanying the modernization of America. Middle class Americans generally saw alcohol as a symbol for everything that was morally deficient with the modern city. As a result, the Prohibition on alcohol caused a spike in organized crime. Gangsters like Al Capone manufactured and distributed alcohol throughout the urban metropolises of northeast United States. Speakeasies were established as an underground location where people who wanted to escape Prohibition could drink and party throughout the night. Furthermore, music clubs, along side speakeasies, were also attractive meeting spots where the modern man or woman could indulge in dancing and drinking while listening to the unrestrictive, improvised and symbolic music of the time, jazz.

All in all, the Jazz Age was a culturally rich, politically divisive and sexually liberating time for the northeastern cities of the United States. Thus, the Jazz Age should not be overlooked in the larger critique of The Great Gatsby as its role as both influential to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s own and as a setting of one of the greatest stories in modern American fiction.

Psychoanalytical Critical Lens Theory

Critical Lens Theories are analytical frameworks used to helps students critique and decode literature and film in a structured yet creative way. Although there are several Critical Lens models, such as Marxist, feminist, structuralism, post-colonial and archetypal, the model that I believe is most applicable to The Great Gatsby is the psychoanalytical model. This model is based upon the psychodynamic work done by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung in the early 20 th century, but has continued to evolve due to the work of other academics and scientists in the field since.

Unlike other critical lens theories, the psychoanalytical model focuses solely on the unconscious, microstructures of power and identity, and small-scale domestic environments. Or, in other words, this model focuses on the relationships characters have with themselves and with other characters within their own social systems. From these relationships, conclusions and inferences can be made about larger cultural phenomenon and social trends that occur or exist within a narrative. Thus, I believe a character-driven film such as The Great Gatsby , which takes place during the colorful period in history known as the Jazz Age, would lend itself well to the psychoanalytical critical lens theory.

The psychoanalytical critical lens theory primarily rests upon the premise that, like dreams, literature and film are mediums into the unconscious landscape of a text’s author and characters. Characters within a given narrative can be better understood through the analysis of their dialogue and actions. The psychoanalytical model asserts that behavior is primarily driven by the unconscious and that a character’s fears, desires and motivations are born out of unresolved conflict, sometimes stemming from childhood experiences. Obviously, as readers, we are not privy to characters’ childhood experiences (or the insight behind an author’s model for creating a particular character). But this model works backwards as well, in that focusing on a character’s behavior and decision-making tendencies may shed light upon a character’s life “before” they exist in the text. Thus, as critics, we are able to draw conclusions about a character’s childhood experience or upbringing using this model- again, with the aim to not only better understand a character but also the significance that character has in the story, as well as what he or she may represent to the author.

At any rate, the conflicts and anxieties of an author and his or her characters are often repressed, unknown t and driven by a variety of unconscious systems that manifest themselves through particular behaviors and defense mechanisms that can be classified into a number of categories.

Id, Ego, and Super-Ego

Central to the psychoanalytical critical lens theory is the idea of the id, ego and superego. Each component of this three-layered structure is constantly wrestling with the other two components for dominance. Together, these components govern the behavior and action of a person.

At the deepest level is the id, which represents the location of instinctual drives like the libido. The libido can be best summarized as any desire or impulse, usually sexual, in its most unchecked state. The id and libido exist without any authority present, moral or spiritual. In essence, the id constitutes a person’s basic biological needs and appetites in their most natural state of existence. The needs include hunger, thirst, sexual pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Also known as the pleasure principle, the id operates with the aim of seeking instant gratification, regardless of circumstance or consequence. For obvious reasons, the id is usually likened to behavior and needs of a newborn baby or infant and very much requires the help of its more developed counterpart, the ego.

The ego is the counterweight to the id and acts to keep the id in check. The ego is different from the id in that it understands that impulses cannot always be gratified. Hence, the ego works under the delay-gratification premise and understands that actions can lead to harmful consequences and punishment. The ego acts as the conscious self and is aware not only of the needs of the self, but also of the needs of others. In sum, along with managing the demands of the id, the ego is very much aware of the reality principle and has a clear understanding over what actions are deemed appropriate and inappropriate.

The superego supersedes its predecessors as it houses the mechanisms for judgment, morality and ethics. The superego is formulated through the values and morality as taught to an individual by his or her parents as well as by the social environment in which an individual is raised. Ultimately, the superego is the mechanism that determines whether an action is right or wrong.

Defense Mechanisms

Often times, negative memories, along with primitive desires stemming from the id, are relegated to the unconscious if they are deemed unpleasant or too painful. However, these feelings do not simply disappear and instead manifest themselves through behaviors known as defense mechanisms. Behaviorally speaking, defense mechanisms are not under an individual’s conscious control and, as Freud believed, function primarily as the ego’s attempt to prevent feelings like anxiety, guilt and fear from flooding into the conscious mind. It is important to know that they can manifest themselves in a variety of formations, as I will briefly cover below, but more important to remember that no matter what form they take, defense mechanisms almost always represent an individual’s desperate need to compensate for a character deficiency or negative experience in the past. The brief explanations I will provide for each defense mechanism are authored by the publication simplypsychology.org

Projection is a defense mechanism that involves assigning blame surrounding one’s own undesirable thoughts, feelings and motives to another person. Consider the following example: Person A feels hatred towards person B. But because the ego informs the conscious mind that hatred is an undesirable feeling, Person A projects feelings of hatred onto person B. Thus, the problem has been “reconciled” as person B hating person A.

Denial involves blocking out events from an individual’s conscious awareness that are deemed too stressful or difficult to handle. In essence, denial is a person’s refusal to acknowledge or experience a grim reality. For example, a smoker may refuse to admit the harmful health consequences related to smoking.

Displacement is the substitution of an impulse with an object or action. For example, a man who experienced difficulties at work with his aggressive boss would come home and yell at his wife. The opposite of displacement is sublimation, which occurs when an impulse is substituted with an object, or action that is socially acceptable such as exercising or creating music.

Lastly, regression is a defense mechanism that involves moving backwards in psychological development after having a negative experience. For example, after the death of a parent an adolescent child may begin wetting the bed or sucking their thumb as they had when they were much younger.

Oedipus Complex

The Oedipus complex is arguably one of Freud’s most interesting ideas relating to psychoanalysis. The Oedipus complex centers around the idealization, fixation and eventual condemnation children feel towards their parents, specifically, boys towards their fathers and females towards their mothers. This theory is unique in that it asserts that as male infants grow older, they develop a desire to possess their mother, both in emotional and romantic terms, and a tendency to show aggressive behavior towards their father, notwithstanding the inclination towards violence or murder. However, long before this climax is realized there exists a deep admiration for one’s parents as providers, nurturers and protectors. Freud argues it is for this reason that men often seek women who possess the characteristics and qualities of their mother and possibly friendships with men who possess the qualities of their father. Likewise, women may yearn to possess men who remind them of their father.

Beneath all of this speculation surrounding intimacy and sex lies the assumption that a child’s relationship with their parents, or lack thereof, is one of the most important factors in a person’s psychological and behavioral development. If anything is taken away from this component of the psychoanalytical model, it is that the relationship between a child and parent in a text should not be overlooked and may be used to reconcile questions or problems surrounding a character’s behavior and psychological profile.

Critical Film Analysis

In the section below I will be analyzing scenes from the film adaptation of The Great Gatsby with two purposes in mind. First, the instruction of this unit requires teachers to have a fundamental understanding of film techniques and film vocabulary. Generally, film analysis begins with the formal elements of film like sound, color, space, camera position and other components unique to film and exclusive from a story’s narrative. Secondly, my scene analysis will serve as a model for instruction and analysis in the classroom.

Like other types of analysis, discussion with students about film should generally start with the most accessible level of content, such as sight and sound, and gradually move into a space where critical thinking and subjective analysis are imperative to understand the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ behind a director’s intention and decision. Teachers interested in this unit should also know there are plenty of scenes from the film that are also worthy of rich speculation that were not included on this list. The scenes listed below were chosen primarily because they were representative of some of the broader thematic points addressed by Fitzgerald but also because they are rich with content that speaks to the heavy stylization of Baz Luhrmann’s direction and production, the psychoanalytical critique of The Great Gatsby’s character’s and possibly a window in the intention of Fitzgerald’s authorship.

Scene – Opening Scene with Nick (00:00:00 – 00:04:05)

The film begins with its opening production credits being visually presented as they would have been during a moving picture from the 1920’s. The images are black and white, grainy, heavily spotted and coupled with a melancholy instrumental that permeates the clip. Gradually, there is transition to color that indicates the film’s own self-awareness as a modern adaptation of a story that was written in an earlier time. As the frame turns to gold we are pulled into the story’s space and the camera finds itself out at sea, slowly moving against the current towards a distant green light atop a lighthouse. Needless to say, this scene mirrors the last lines of the text when our narrator, Nick Carraway, symbolically illustrates how the notion that one can never be emancipated from ones’ past in the face of progress is similar to being out at sea against a persistent current. Likewise, the fog and snow in the scene may also be interpreted as the distractions in our own lives that impede or distract us on our journey towards achieving our dreams.

We are then introduced to Nick Carraway, our narrator who, while at The Perkins Sanitarium, speaks to his therapist about his experience with Jay Gatsby. The setting of the sanitarium is dark, stale and covered in snow. Its near monochromatic black and white color scheme speaks to the mental turmoil and depressed state of Nick, and functions almost like a visual hangover that Nick has woken up with after his colorful and intoxicating experience with Gatsby in New York City. The close-up on Nick’s shadowy unshaven face and unkempt suite further reinforces his own disheveled disposition and mental state.

Psychologically speaking, Nick’s dialogue about his father’s advice and his relationship with Gatsby is very revealing. Nick’s father’s advice that was given to Nick regarding the urge to reserve judgment about others is presented as not having been followed as Nick admits his “disgust” with everybody he had come across in New York. Despite acknowledging that even he has “a limit” to his reservation of judgment, Nick seemed to have displaced his feelings of disgust with substance abuse highlighted when the cameras focuses on the long list of medical conditions, including “alcoholic” listed on his medical chart. His engagement in this defense mechanisms shows that Nick has a strong ego and secondly, his sentiment towards the moral temperature of the Jazz Age (as revealed in his monologue) shows Nick has a fairly strong superego in that he is able to make moral judgments and understand the consequences of impulsive and decadent behavior.

Nick’s feelings towards Gatsby are also revealed during this scene, especially when Nick recollects Gatsby as being “the single most hopeful person I have ever met.” Clearly, Nick valued his relationship with Gatsby very much. But, because Nick’s story of “the Great Gatsby” is colored by nostalgia and muddied by his consumption of alcohol, students may conclude that Nick should not be considered a reliable narrator. This argument could also be made for Fitzgerald; his own avid drinking and financial struggles may have peppered his regard for the social systems and environments of his time with anxiety.

Nevertheless, the scene ends with Nick’s loving sentiment for Jay Gatsby, complemented by the camera’s calm movement and slow zooms, juxtaposed with scenes from the busy streets of New York during the Jazz Age. Here we are shown short retro-style takes filled with colorful imagery and fast-moving people, spliced together in quick succession. The scene’s use of super-imposition along with the camera’s medium and long shots interprets the Jazz Age as hysterical, dangerous, unrelenting and momentous. The scene concludes with the camera hastily descending a skyscraper from a 2-wing plane to the top hat of Nick Carraway where he breaks the proverbial fourth-wall by greeting the audience with direct eye contact and an inviting smile.

Scene – Gatsby Reconnects with Daisy (00:50:42- 01:00:00)

In this scene Gatsby is preparing to be reacquainted with Daisy after five long years. Gatsby claims he has been in love with Daisy since their meeting prior to his deployment in World War I. Gatsby had asked Nick to facilitate this encounter by inviting Daisy to tea at Nick’s home. Visually, Luhrmann wonderfully illustrates the importance this moment is to Gatsby. We are shown dozens of colorful bouquets of flowers as symbols of the love and hope that Gatsby has for Daisy and this moment. The clock on the mantle is central to the room and its ticking reminds the audience that Gatsby has been waiting for this moment and has become apprehensive with each passing second. Gatsby’s inadvertent breaking of the clock also hints at his own desire to halt the continual passage of time and instead preserve this moment with his previous lover forever.

The workers Gatsby has hired move busily around the yard, hinting at Gatsby’s obsessive need to exert power and control over his life experiences. The number of workers Luhrmann puts on screen simultaneously also symbolizes Gatsby’s monetary capital. The pouring rain that occurs moments before Daisy’s arrival also plays a significant role. Luhrmann’s uses the heavy rain as a way to create tension and a sense of anxiety or dread that the audience feels for Gatsby as he wonders around aimlessly. Last of the props is the boiling tea pot that, like the rain, add to the tension and represents the emotional pressure Gatsby is, and Daisy will be, feeling.

Psychologically, Gatsby is told by Nick that he is acting like “a little boy.” It is fair to say that as Gatsby faces this stressful reality he has regressed into childlike behavior. He is obsessive, compulsive, anxious, and doubtful of himself and worried about the future- -all character traits that are confirmed in other scenes from the film, notably his flashback clip. To add to this sense of vulnerability, Gatsby reenters the house with his clothes completely soaked from the rain. This suggests that the anxiety he is feeling, as illustrated by the effect of the rain, has essentially left Gatsby emotionally transparent, or “see-through.” On a separate but important note, Gatsby never once acknowledges his meeting with Daisy as being immoral or, at the very least unethical, considering that she is a married woman. Very deliberately, the moral conflict surrounding infidelity is not addressed by anyone throughout the film other than Nick in this very scene. This further cements the notion that, aside from Nick, the characters in The Great Gatsby , possibly mirroring Fitzgerald’s feelings towards the Jazz Age, lack a moral compass, or in psychoanalytical terms, a superego.

The tension of the scene is finally visually resolved when rain is replaced with sunny blue skies and the boiling teapot is relieved of its duty and used to serve tea. In a stroke of great directorship, Luhrmann shows us the strength and the feeling of intimacy Gatsby and Daisy share when the camera is not invited into the couple’s playful and seemingly sensitive conversations. Nick even tests the trance they are in by producing loud noises in the kitchen, possibly in an attempt to disrupt the inevitability of becoming the dreaded third wheel.

The next scene, without diving into detail, excels at showing Gatsby’s reliance on materialism to compensate for the insecurities he had about wealth and power as a young child.

Scene – Jordan’s Flashback (00:45:15- 00:47:00)

Jordan’s flashback while debriefing Nick about Gatsby’s plan to meet Daisy is one of two flashbacks that give the audience a visualization of Daisy and Gatsby’s dissimilar backstories and through them, a better understanding of their character and psychological profiles. Luhrmann begins with a close-up of Jordan playing golf on what seems to be Daisy’s family estate. The scene is washed in vintage pastel coloring that reinforces it as not only a flashback, but also one that is remembered by Jordan as a positive and joyous time in the young women’s lives. Daisy sits in the driver’s seat of a shiny, expensive car, with a younger, more eager, Jay Gatsby. This imagery suggests her wealth, power and popularity with men. Gatsby is then sent off to war and we are shown historical clips of World War I that end with a shot of Gatsby walking away from the audience into a black backdrop. This illustrates the sense of uncertainty that will plague not only Gatsby’s future but also Daisy’s hope for his return. This image is followed by a shot of Tom Buchanan, whose tuxedo represents the contrast between his and Gatsby’s background, facing the audience with a super-imposed newspaper clipping behind him highlighting both his fame and wealth. Tom is then shown providing Daisy with pearls and jewelry.

Baz Luhrmann really succeeds in conveying Tom’s influence over Daisy in a close-up shot of Tom wrapping his fingers tightly around the pearl necklace on her neck as if to imply his ownership of Daisy by means of money and material things. When Daisy gets cold feet, we see the pearl necklace breaking and being put together by her mother and Jordan Baker. This clip alludes to Daisy’s doubts being meticulously managed and “cleaned up” by others, thus further implying Daisy’s passivity in that she allows others, including her mother, to determine her major life decisions, possibly out of the pressure the family exerts over maintaining appearances and the integrity of the family name. Lastly, Luhrmann leaves the audience with a sense of curiosity when Daisy rips up her letter from Gatsby and we are shown only pieces of the intimate and mysterious words as they fade into the foreground before getting too close to the camera.

This clip also provides the audience with great insight into Daisy’s life and value system. Clearly, Daisy can be said to have a strong ego, in that she is able to set aside her true desire to marry Gatsby- a man with a questionable background. She rationalizes that marrying someone who can provide security, fame and fortune is generally a safe way to insure her own prosperity. This notion is further cemented by her decision to stay with Tom despite his infidelities only weeks into their marriage.

Contrary to Daisy, Gatsby seems to have a strong id in that he is relentless in his obsession with Daisy and his desire to marry her. He has a total disregard for the conventions of society with respect to infidelity, boundaries and realistic expectations. Jordan tells Nick during this scene that everything Gatsby has done, including his rise to wealth and move to East Egg, has been motivated by his need to impress Daisy. Neither Daisy nor Gatsby seem to have a strong superego in that both seem, at best, to disregard how their relations with one another are subject to moral and ethical objections according to mainstream social values. However, it is worth mentioning that the disintegration of American morality during the Jazz Age, as Fitzgerald implies, may partly explain their behavior.

Other Scenes Worthy of Analysis

As much as I would love to provide in-depth film analysis for each of the scenes in Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby , the formal constraints of this unit do not allow that degree of extensive narrative. Rather, I will provide a short list of other scenes from the film worthy of classroom analysis. In this section I will also briefly mention the significance each scene offers with regard to the discussion points they will no doubt provoke.

Tom and Nick’s Hotel Party in New York

After taking a train through the Valley of Ashes, Nick Carraway and Tom Buchanan rambunctiously party in a New York apartment used by Tom for his affair with Myrtle. This scene gives great insight into the dynamic between Nick and Tom and the behavior Tom and his friends engage in, seemingly, quite frequently and without thought. Psychoanalytically, the scenes serve to demonstrate the strength of the characters’ id as they seek pleasure in experience with drugs, alcohol and sex. Significantly, this scene also touches on Nick’s moral struggle with this behavior and his fluidity as a narrator.

Gatsby’s Party

This scene beautifully demonstrates the length to which Baz Luhrmann went to recreate the vibrancy of the Jazz Age and the opulence of Gatsby’s parties. The saturation of color, sound, behavior and personalities makes for remarkable viewing. Here scenes of moral disintegration, pleasing the senses and engagement in pure debauchery and decadence fill the screen. Lastly, we are provided a window into the life of Gatsby, his behavior, motivations and shady secrets.

Gatsby’s Flashback

Like Jordan’s flashback, Gatsby’s is ripe with a cinematic uniqueness that helps it stand out against the rest of the movie. The slow motion, extreme close-ups and dark overlay breathe tension and weight into the hardship of Gatsby’s younger years. Furthermore, the flashback helps to redeem Gatsby as a character by illustrating his tenacity, ambition and ability to capitalize on any opportunity. Lastly, the scene confirms to the audience that Gatsby is a self-made man; essentially representing the connection Gatsby’s journey has with America’s story as a nation.

Tom’s Confrontation with Gatsby

This scene centers on the rising action of the story when all of the main characters go to lunch and what is essentially their infidelity is brought to a head. Visually, students will notice the tension through the temperature of the environment. Luhrmann emphasizes this by his use of a warm color palette, overhead shots and abundance of props like water, ice, fans and windows. This scene is also very telling of the characters’ psychological profile as Tom and Gatsby, both practicing displacement over’s Daisy’s frustration toward each of then, essentially argue over ownership of Daisy, who seems to be quite fickle with her man, by debating on which of them is the less shallow man.

Instructional Strategies

Essential questions.

The driving questions behind this unit are threefold, and essentially aim to focus student inquiry around the character’s relationships and decisions in The Great Gatsby , which in turn, act as a window into American values during the Jazz Age. Furthermore, these questions will help to facilitate discussion around how Baz Luhrmann’s film techniques as a director accentuated these points.

The essential questions are as follows. First, what do The Great Gatsby and its characters tell us about what is most valued in America during the Jazz Age? Second, how does the psychoanalytical critical lens model help us gain insight into the characters’ values and morality in The Great Gatsby ? Lastly, how do the film techniques used in The Great Gatsby suggest or reinforce the characters’ internal and external conflicts?

Classroom Activities

Film inventory.

A great way to start off any unit involving film is to ask students to take an inventory of their own experiences with film. Teachers’ may open the unit with a simple question: “What makes a great film?” This activity will encourage students to engage with others about their favorite flicks and to think critically about what made them great. Furthermore, it will give teachers a platform to give students general information about the five elements of fiction, film vocabulary and a loose baseline by which all classroom films can be assessed.

Teachers should begin by asking students to make a list of their top five favorite films and eventually ask them to qualify each entry. This will get students excited and ready to share. Next, ask students to share their annotated list with a partner. After five minutes or so, shift the focus from pair sharing to a more collective, classroom discussion. If time permits, each pair of students can share their discussion with the class.

Teachers should then ask students what specifically makes a film great. Is there something unique to all of the films on their list? Is it the characters, plot, conflicts, atmosphere or direction? Give students a few minutes to consider this larger question by asking them to write down their answers under their list. Teachers may want to use a piece of butcher paper to collect the wide array of responses that are sure to come. Once students have finished writing, open the classroom up for a general discussion. In this space, students can share their opinions while the teacher compiles answers on the piece of butcher paper. Teachers should consider asking the students the same question upon completion of this unit as a way to highlight student growth.

Once this activity is near its end, teachers can use the momentum established on the topic of film as a springboard into film vocabulary, the five elements of fiction and the roles of a director.

“I saw, I felt, I thought…”

This activity aims to help students unpack the visual content of a scene upon its completion. Essentially, this activity acts as a framework that can be used after viewing each of the scenes listed in the section above titled Critical Film Analysis. Furthermore, this activity encourages students to synthesize the visual aspects of film with their own emotional and intellectual reactions. Teachers can use this activity as a vehicle for teaching students about a variety of film techniques and the ability film has to evoke emotional reaction within its audience.

Teachers should create a graphic organizer with four columns and three rows. The rows will allow space for two scenes from The Great Gatsby , while the columns will be titled, respectively, “I Saw,” “I Felt,” and “I Thought.” If paper space does not permit, students can break down one scene at a time instead of two (it may be helpful to rotate the paper into landscape position).

After a scene, which should require repeated showing, students will be asked what they saw. This first step does not require any deep analysis and should act as a way to ease students into the larger approaches behind film analysis. Students can make lists, shorthand notes or complete sentences on what they visually saw in the clip. What colors were used? What actions were taken? What sounds were made? What music was played? What did the environment look like? What props were used? Sound and music should be considered as well. Teachers can prompt students to share their notes after giving them five minutes or so to write. This activity will train students to become more aware of the film’s art direction, spatiality, audio and character consumes.

After showing the clip for a second time, students will then write down how they felt during the scene. Ask students what emotions they felt while the clip was playing. Were they anxious, afraid, joyful, tense, relaxed, confused or indifferent? Students should be encouraged to draw connections from the visual and audio elements of the film to these feelings. Ask students what specifically happened during the scene that prompted these feelings. Was it something the character did? Was it the mood, tone or atmosphere of the scene? Were your feelings evoked by something situational or something visual? Eventually students will become more aware of the ability film has to evoke emotional reactions in its audience. Reminding students that this relationship exists and is intentional will help students better understand the purpose of film and a film’s director.

Lastly, students will offer their own criticisms, discoveries and personal connections to the film in the column titled “I thought.” Students can offer their own intellectual commentary surrounding any and all aspects of the film, its execution and their role as an audience member. What parts of the scene did students enjoy? What was the intention of the director in regard to the scene? What connections were made to yourself, other texts or worldly events? In sum, this section is open-ended and a great way to give students the tools to begin their journey into becoming film critics.

Sketch and Shoot

Sketch and Shoot is an activity that allows students to tap into their creative side. Using poster paper, butcher paper or regular printer paper, students should be instructed to create their own storyboard of a scene from The Great Gatsby . This activity is accessible to a wide range of learners because students can choose to mirror the scene shot for shot or exercise their own creative side and compile a storyboard that is completely different from Baz Luhrmann’s scene. Paper can be folded into squares of four, six or eight depending on its size of the paper and the comfort level of the student.

Teachers should remind students that each detail in camera angle, character detail and sequence should be deliberate. Students should be able to articulate why their storyboard is special or arguably more effective than the film’s version of the scene. This can be done through written composition or an oral presentation. Students can also find guidance in the original text by allowing their imagination to inform their storyboard creation.

Lastly, this activity can end with students putting their storyboards to use. If time permits, students can use either their phones or another tech device to act out their scenes in small groups. This part of the activity can really enable students to acquire a deep understanding of the role of a director and the importance of camera angles and movement. Teachers can plan ahead by asking students to bring props and costumes the day before the shoot as a way to increase buy-in with students. The final product can be edited on iMovie and presented to the class as a way to celebrate student learning, creativity and hopefully, their newfound love for film.

Character Profile

Asking students to write a character profile on a main character is an effective method for assessing a student’s understanding of the psychoanalytical critical lens theory as well as the content of The Great Gatsby . Although not explicitly mentioned in the classroom activities section, this assessment should follow an activity that focuses on close analysis of each character from the film, possibly through the use of a graphic organizer or Socratic seminar.

Teachers should ask students to choose their favorite, or possibly least favorite, character from the film. Giving students agency around their subject should increase buy-in and help generate a more interesting response. Once students have chosen a character they should begin considering the following questions: Who is this person? What type of person is this? What are their motivations, desires and ambitions? What do they fear? What motivates them? What is their primary purpose or goal in the story? This assignment can even allow students to exercise their creativity if asked: What do you think their childhood was like? If this person lived in our world, where would they work, live and play? These questions prompt students to analyze the characters from The Great Gatsby in a traditional literary analytical sense with a dimension of psychoanalysis.

This assessment should highlight those students who have a firm grasp on the narrative of The Great Gatsby , Fitzgerald’s intention and the psychoanalytical critical lens theory. Moreover, this assignment creates a platform for rich discussion around topics like morality, ethics, love, class and relationships.

Scene Review

One thing that most films have in common is they are often subject to rigorous scrutiny in a film review. Although usually reserved for audience members with a more refined pedigree, film reviews can be done by anyone. Why not start with a scene review written by teenagers?

This attitude of inclusiveness should be communicated to students after they watch The Great Gatsby . The idea that students will draft and publish a scene review, possibly through a social media outlet, can be socially empowering as much as it is academically encouraging.

For this summative assessment teachers will first model to students the basics of a film review. Plentiful reviews of The Great Gatsby , albeit often times negative, can be found on many major media websites. Printing several out and asking students to read them in small groups can be a great way to illustrate the accessibility of a film review. Students should realize most film reviews are subjective, full of opinion and rife with criticism. They cover topics ranging from the actors performances, the integrity of the story, the deviation of the script or commentary over the costumes and props. Furthermore, students should be encouraged to try and place themselves in the director’s chair and determine his or her intention, execution and overall value.

Once students have become familiar with the form and function of a film review, teachers should prompt students to choose one or two of their favorite scenes from The Great Gatsb y. Encourage students to take copious notes while viewing their designated scene at least three times. Individual scenes can usually be found on Youtube.com.

After students have finished their notation and brainstorming they should develop some degree of organization to what will essentially be an argumentative or narrative essay. Students can arrange their notes around character performance, the elements of fiction; or possibly in narrative form using chronological order or anecdotal viewing experience. What is most important is that students use evidence. Evidence in a film review necessitates predicating a claim using a visual cue, character action, piece of dialogue or any other component that can be seen, heard or felt while watching the film. To support students in their writing- and to make these scene reviews as “realistic” as possibly- teachers should look to the mechanical and stylistic strategies usually found in narrative writing.

When student writing is complete teachers can publish their reviews on a classroom website to further emulate the experience of what it means to be a bona fide film critic. Or at the very least, students can be asked to read their reviews to their classmates.

Common Core Alignment

Although this unit touches on multiple Common Core anchor standards, I have listed below some standards that are deemed most relevant to this unit’s content, application and student activities. The alignment of the following Common Core standards are also predicated on the assumption that students will be using the original The Great Gatsby text in conjunction with the film adaptation, as mentioned both in this unit’s synopsis and introduction.

With regard to student writing activities, Common Core English Language Arts anchor standards W.1, and W.4 are most relevant. W.1 asks students to, “Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.” Essentially, any and all activities that ask students to respond to questions and prompts using evidence from the original text to support their claims falls into these parameters. W.4 requires students to, “Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.” This component in student writing can most likely be seen in their scene review, character profile or other writing assignments where they are asked to outline, organize and consider their audience.

If teachers and students decide to publish the students’ writing, as may be the case with their scene reviews and storyboarding activities, Common Core ELA anchor standard W.6 becomes applicable. This standard states that students will, “Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.” This standard really encourages students to utilize the Internet for research, inspiration, collaboration and ultimately publication. Students posting, sharing and commenting on each other’s scene reviews and character profiles, as published on social media, is a great example of how technology and written composition can complement one another in the classroom.

Lastly, students will be exercising Common Core Reading anchor standards RL.11-12.4 that asks students to, “Analyze the impact of the author's choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).” In sum, by students considering the intention of F. Scott Fitzgerald and director Baz Luhrmann, they will be analyzing their decisions surrounding elements of fiction and this particular narrative.

Annotated Bibliography

The Jazz Age. Produced by National Broadcasting Company. Performed by Fred Allen. 2003.

This 60 minute DVD depicts original footage from the Jazz Age as it concentrates on the shift in moral landscape that occurred between the end of World War 1 up to the Great Crash of 1929. Narrated by Fred Allen, this documentary is part of a larger Project Twenty series that won an Emmy and Peabody award for its excellence in visual delivery. This film is accessible to students and can be a great way to illustrate American life and the momentous cultural shifts that occurred during this historic period.

Bloom, Harold. F. Scott Fitzgerald: Bloom's Modern Critical Views. New York, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2006.

Bloom’s text on F. Scott Fitzgerald is as comprehensive as it is meticulous. For teachers who want to really understand Fitzgerald’s childhood and personal and private struggles as an adult, Bloom delivers in full. However, due to its density and often dry delivery, this text is not as suited for students as much as for adults eager to dive into the tragic life of Fitzgerald. Nevertheless, it is an interesting read and successful in its intention.

Boundless History. The Jazz Age. 2015. https://www.boundless.com/u-s-history/textbooks/boundless-u-s-history-textbook/from-the-new-era-to-the-great-depression-1920-1933-24/a-culture-of-change-187/the-jazz-age-1031-1995/ (accessed 2015).

This website offers an accessible narrative on the Jazz Age by focusing on the social and cultural dynamics that were changing during the 1920’s. The website in a larger capacity offers short textual vignettes on many other historical moments and movements in the United States. Lastly, the website offers supplementary content to further enrich a student’s understanding around the often colorful yet controversial history concerning the United States. It is designed for classroom education in mind.

Lee, A. Robert. Fitzgerald: The Promises of Life. London: Vision Press, 1989.

Robert Lee’s collection of essays in The Promises of Life may be seen as hit or miss in so far as teachers interested in teaching Fitzgerald may have trouble with Lee’s specificity of content. Essentially, Lee dissects a number of themes and symbols in Fitzgerald’s collection of work in an effort to deconstruct their respective significance with regard to Fitzgerald’s own life experiences. Although interesting and informative, this text should primarily be used by teachers interested in drawing broad thematic connections to Fitzgerald’s life and his extensive collection of fiction.

Parr, Susan Resneck. The Moral of the Story: Literature, Values and American Education. New York City, New York: Teachers College Press, 1982.

In The Moral of the Story, Susan Parr approaches several distinguished stories in literature and analyzes them through the framework of morality and their function in academia. Needless to say, I only read the section on The Great Gatsby but, nevertheless, was pleased with her commentary on Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. Parr illustrates how The Great Gatsby can be used in education to highlight the moral dichotomies and shifting values in American culture. In short, The Moral of the Story can be used by teachers interested in getting a sense for the thematic and narrative value The Great Gatsby has in the modern classroom.

Pick, Daniel. Psychoanalysis: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions). OUP Oxford Press, 2015.

Pick’s short text on psychoanalysis is part of a larger series titled “Very Short Introductions.” It effectively summarizes the basis for, history of and major dimensions of psychoanalysis. This text frames psychoanalysis as a therapeutic approach as opposed to a critical lens theory used in an academic setting. Nevertheless, Psychoanalysis: A Very Short Introduction offers teachers detail, context and a deeper understanding of psychodynamics.

Purdue University . Psychoanalytic Criticism (1930s-Present). June 2013. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/04/ (accessed 2015).

Purdue Owl is a great resource for teachers interested in using psychoanalytical critical lens theory in the classroom. It offers guiding questions, strategies and approaches to framing texts, characters and other elements of fiction around critical lens theory. Furthermore, this website offers the same amount of detail for a number of other critical lens theories and literary criticisms. It was designed with teachers and students in mind and should not be overlooked if interested in better understanding and practicing critical lens theory.

Sikov, Ed. Film Studies: An Introduction (Film and Culture Series). New York City, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

Sikov’s introduction to film studies is an accessible text for teachers and students alike. Sikov covers basic vocabulary, concepts and approaches to analyzing a variety of film genres. Moreover, he highlights a number of techniques and strategies directors use by exemplifying a variety of benchmark films revered in film circles.

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A Summary and Analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby is the quintessential Jazz Age novel, capturing a mood and a moment in American history in the 1920s, after the end of the First World War. Rather surprisingly, The Great Gatsby sold no more than 25,000 copies in F. Scott Fitzgerald's lifetime. It has now sold over 25 million copies. If Fitzgerald had stuck with one of the ...
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald's third novel. It was published in 1925. Set in Jazz Age New York, it tells the story of Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire, and his pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, a wealthy young woman whom he loved in his youth. Commercially unsuccessful upon publication, the book is now considered a classic of American fiction.
The Great Gatsby Study Guide
The publication of his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920, made Fitzgerald a literary star. He married Zelda one week later. In 1924, the couple moved to Paris, where Fitzgerald began work on The Great Gatsby. Though now considered his masterpiece, the novel sold only modestly. The Fitzgeralds returned to the United States in 1927.
Best Summary and Analysis: The Great Gatsby
He has always been extremely ambitious, creating the Jay Gatsby persona as a way of transforming himself into a successful self-made man—the ideal of the American Dream. Nick, Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and Jordan get together for lunch. At this lunch, Daisy and Gatsby are planning to tell Tom that she is leaving him.
The Great Gatsby Critical Essays
Gatsby retains the American Dream in its purest form. A. He has the quality of the original seekers of the dream—the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. III. He adheres to the precept of ...
The Great Gatsby Critical Evaluation
Critics often assert that The Great Gatsby is a uniquely American novel that depicts American characters and themes. Indeed, Gatsby is the archetypal American character: He is self-made, a man who ...
The Great Gatsby Analysis: What Does It All Mean? ️
Read an analysis of The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is a short novel, just nine chapters, each built around a party scene — though the final "party" is, of course, a funeral. The story itself is about a poor boy from a farming background who becomes fabulously wealthy.
(PDF) Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: Critical Reception and
Schreier highlights "how The Great Gatsby resists precisely the recognizant expectations upon which historicism, especially in the guise of an analysis of the novel's interest in racialization, is based and how in doing this it points towards the possibility of a more open and critical form of reading" (154).
The Great Gatsby Themes and Analysis
By F. Scott Fitzgerald. Within 'The Great Gatsby,' F. Scott Fitzgerald taps into several important themes. These include the American dream, and its decline, as well as wealth, class, and love. Article written by Emma Baldwin. B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.
The Great Gatsby
The story of the novel, The Great Gatsby, revolves around a young man, Nick Carraway, who comes from Minnesota to New York in 1922. He is also the narrator of the story. His main objective is to establish his career in the bonds. Nick rents a house in West Egg on Long Island, which is a fictional village of New York.
Critical interpretations Feminist criticism The Great Gatsby: A Level
Key interpretation. The Great Gatsby lends itself to a wide range of critical approaches. For example, an eco-critical reading might focus upon America's transformation from 'a fresh, green breast of the new world' (p. 171) to a modern industrial and urbanised society, and examine critically ways in which that change is reflected in the plot and characterisation as well as the settings ...
Critical interpretations Psychoanalytic criticism The Great Gatsby: A Level
A literary critic taking a psychoanalytic approach might point to the passage where we learn that, as a boy, Gatsby's 'heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night' (p. 95). In these waking dreams, Gatsby tussles with unconscious desires that he can't really grasp.
Best Analysis: The American Dream in The Great Gatsby
Book Guides. The Great Gatsby is a tragic love story on the surface, but it's most commonly understood as a pessimistic critique of the American Dream. In the novel, Jay Gatsby overcomes his poor past to gain an incredible amount of money and a limited amount of social cache in 1920s NYC, only to be rejected by the "old money" crowd.
The Great Gatsby: A Critical Thinking Reader's Guide
The Jazz Age Journal The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is such a multilayered and evergreen text! I've read it myriad times, and --- I'm sure you can relate --- I discover a new idea or noticing every time I revisit it. ... The Great Gatsby: A Critical Thinking Reader's Guide. Posted by Marilyn Yung July 5, 2022 July 6, 2022 Posted in ...
PDF THE GREAT GATSBY UNIT STUDENT PACKET
The Great Gatsby Quotes (Critical Response & Analysis) 52 3 ... 60 4 The Great Gatsby Symbolism/Motif Group Poster (Critical Response & Analysis) 20 5 The Great Gatsby Symbols & Motifs (Critical Response & Analysis) 20 6 The Great Gatsby Tracing Themes ... (Critical Thinking, Writing & Analysis) 40 TOTAL 262 .
Best Summary and Analysis: The Great Gatsby, Chapter 6
Book Guides. Chapter 6 of The Great Gasby is a major turning point in the novel: after the magical happiness of Gatsby and Daisy's reunion ins Chapter 5, we start too see the cracks that will unravel the whole story. Possibly because of this shift in tone from buildup to letdown, this chapter underwent substantial rewrites late in the editing ...
Salem Press
The critical overviews are followed by a series of critical readings that focus on narrative style, color symbolism, and character analysis among other topics. Spanning nearly 40 years of critical study, the selection of essays contained in this volume provide the ideal introduction for anyone seeking an introduction to this American classic.
Great Gatsby through the Lens of Feminism
November 5, 2018. ENGL 100. Prof Whitley. The Great Gatsby through the lens of Feminism. Feminist criticism examines the ways in which literature has been written according to issues of gender. It focuses its attention on how cultural productions such as literature address the economic, social, political, and psychological oppression of women ...
Film, Freud and Fitzgerald: A Psychoanalytical Critique of The Great
The Great Gatsby is a perfect example of this tendency and gives plenty of room for students to make inferences and draw conclusions between Gatsby's tragic, ... and gradually move into a space where critical thinking and subjective analysis are imperative to understand the 'whys' and 'hows' behind a director's intention and ...
PDF Name: Period: THE GREAT GATSBY A P
OVERVIEW. As we read The Great Gatsby, you will be expected to complete all of the critical thinking, analysis, and synthesis activities in this packet. In addition to receiving classwork grades for your work on each of the nine chapters in the novel, your completed assignments will be submitted on the day of the unit exam; collectively, they ...
Great Gatsby Chapter 1 Critical Reading Questions Flashcards
Great Gatsby Chapter 1 Critical Reading Questions. What advice does Nick's father give him? Click the card to flip 👆. he reminds nick that not everyone has the same privileges nick does. Click the card to flip 👆. 1 / 23.

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