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F. Scott Fitgerald; The Great Gatsby - Coggle Diagram
F. Scott Fitgerald; The Great Gatsby
Key facts
The story is set in1922, in Long Island and New York City.
Protagonist: Gatsby and/or Nick
Date of first publication: 1925
It was written in 1923–1924, America and France.
Major conflict: Gatsby has amassed a vast fortune in order to win the affections of the upper-class Daisy Buchanan, but his mysterious past stands in the way of his being accepted by her.
Genre: tragedy, social satire
The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s
The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music, resulted ultimately in the corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals.
When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy.
Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure.
The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained increase in the national wealth and a newfound materialism, as people began to spend and consume at unprecedented levels.
The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess.
A person from any social background could, potentially, make a fortune, but the American aristocracy—families with old wealth—scorned the newly rich industrialists and speculators.
On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman
Additionally, the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned the sale of alcohol, created a thriving underworld designed to satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among rich and poor alike.
In the 1920s depicted in the novel, however, easy money and relaxed social values have corrupted this dream, especially on the East Coast.
As Fitzgerald saw it (and as Nick explains in Chapter 9), the American dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness.
Characters as emblems of social trends.
Meyer Wolfshiem and Gatsby’s fortune symbolize the rise of organized crime and bootlegging.
The clash between “old money” and “new money” manifests itself in the novel’s symbolic geography: East Egg represents the established aristocracy, West Egg the self-made rich.
The various social climbers and ambitious speculators who attend Gatsby’s parties evidence the greedy scramble for wealth.
Nick and Gatsby, both of whom fought in World War I, exhibit the newfound cosmopolitanism and cynicism that resulted from the war.
The Hollowness of the Upper Class
West Egg and its denizens represent the newly rich, while East Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom, represent the old aristocracy.
Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and taste.
One of the major topics explored in The Great Gatsby is the sociology of wealth,
Gatsby, for example, lives in a monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-Royce, and does not pick up on subtle social signals, such as the insincerity of the Sloanes’ invitation to lunch.
In contrast, the old aristocracy possesses grace, taste, subtlety, and elegance, epitomized by the Buchanans’ tasteful home and the flowing white dresses of Daisy and Jordan Baker.
Class
Love and marriage
The American Dream
Gatsby suffers the most from the promise of social mobility inherent to the American Dream. He spends his life believing that if he makes enough money and acquires enough possessions, he can transcend his lower-class birth and become equal to Daisy and Tom.
However, even though Gatsby succeeds in acquiring wealth, he is never accepted by the upper class. Gatsby’s failure to attain the American Dream suggests the Dream is both an unattainable and unwise goal.
Readers may end the novel wondering if the American Dream is actually attainable at all.
Every character in The Great Gatsby draws inspiration from the American Dream’s promise of wealth and prosperity. At the same time, the novel itself critiques the notion of the American Dream.
These shared ideals include a notion of freedom that ensures all Americans the possibility of upward social mobility, as long as they work for it.
The American Dream refers to a shared set of ideals that guide the spirit of the United States.