The story of a lonely millionaire Jay Gatsby and his passion for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, has touched not only women’s hearts all over the world, but men’s as well. While reading this masterpiece created by F. Scott Fitzgerald from the introduction to its conclusion, you will dive into the...atmosphere of the Roaring Twenties full of luxury and seduction. In your essays on The Great Gatsby, may ask you to dwell on such issues as American Dream, idealism or decadence. But what if you are not an expert and can’t do this yourself? You do not need to worry, as today you can find many writing samples, which you can use in order to create your own papers.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, as Jay Gatsby delves into his pursuit of wealth and need for materialism, his hopes and aspirations become shattered in a world of unobtainable and unreachable possibilities. While Jay Gatsby confidently believes that material excess will ultimately bring...
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” later adapted by Baz Luhrmann, involves many complex themes that alter an audiences interpretation of the story, however this is not only due to the change in form but Luhrmann’s vision and the 2013 context. The hollowness of the...
The American ethos is people can create their own lives and attain happiness. America, the new world, represents a person’s opportunity to recreate one’s self and deny past ties. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses his novel, The Great Gatsby, to explore how the American dream is...
On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action takes place over a mere few months...
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, there is an undeniable chemistry between the two main characters, Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby. While some may see this relationship as just a strong friendship, there is evidence to believe that Nick felt something more than...
Throughout history, the eye has always been an emblem of the deities. In the Egyptian pantheon, there is Horus, god of light, who is signified by his famous Eye; in the Roman pantheon, there is Juno, associated with the many-eyed peacock; and in the Hindu...
Tom Buchanan is an important figure throughout the course of The Great Gatsby, and is used as Fitzgerald’s symbolic representation of the moral and emotional decadence of the era. Tom forms part of Fitzgerald’s social critique of the upper classes, and reflects the perceived lack...
Ernest Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby revolve around one primary character who serves as a vessel that reveals the major theme of the book. The Great Gatsby chronicles Jay Gatsby’s pursuit of love, while Farewell to Arms is the...
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a 1920s novel about the romantic and tragic society of Long Island’s elite, set in an era when the morals are loosening as fast as the womens’ skirts are tightening. Tom and Daisy Buchanan are a couple...
In both The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath, color is used in order to reflect the atmosphere or mood. This allows Fitzgerald and Steinbeck to illustrate the events in a more sophisticated style and intensify the clarity of actions; therefore allowing the audience...
The acclaimed novel The Great Gatsby was written by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald in the year 1925. Throughout time, the book has been recognized for accurately representing the Roaring Twenties’ society in the United States, a point in history where economy grew and...
As F. Scott Fitzgerald said in his lifetime, “‘Women are so weak, really – emotionally unstable – and their nerves, when strained, break . . . this is a man’s world. All wise women conform to the man’s lead’”(Kerr 406). He demonstrates this idea through...
Throughout literature, there are countless characters whose only positive attributes seem to be the fact that they are utterly detestable – the reader loves to hate them. From Shakespeare’s conniving Iago to Dickens’ endlessly cruel Estella, these characters bring nothing but pain to those around...
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a shining example of the principle that the most powerful messages are not told but rather shown. Although the novel is written in the form of largely impartial narration by Nick Carraway, Fitzgerald’s criticism of American life...
In F.S. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the color yellow is a prevalent hue as it symbolizes the high society. Thus yellow symbolism not only appears among the rich, but also appears in palces of desolation. While gold equates to luxury and wealth in an objective...
The Great Gatsby is a novel that has been evaluated by countless critics since its original publication in April of 1925. What makes it such an incredible piece of literature is that it seems to contain endless levels of meaning, and the reader has the...
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby,” opens with this piece of advice quoted to Nick, the narrator of the story, by...
F. Scott Fitzgerald explores the decline of the American Dream in one of his most famous novels, The Great Gatsby. Although this book only takes place over a few months, it represents the entire time period of the 1920s, in which society, mainly on the...
Throughout F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterwork The Great Gatsby, the remarkably capricious character of Daisy Fay Buchanan succinctly epitomizes the ideas of aristocracy and superficiality so readily present in the hedonistic society of the roaring twenties. Regardless of whom she associates herself with, Daisy, through her...
The extravagant, mystical events that are Gatsby’s parties represent the charming surface of a wealthy lifestyle and the complete lack of substance underneath. Through lyrical, soaring phrases punctuated by a plethora of adjectives Fitzgerald lends the parties an air of enchantment and portrays the elaborate...
Through its unflattering characterization of those at the top of the economic heap and its appalling examination of the ways in which the American Dream not only fails to fulfill its promise but also contributes to the decay of moral values in a modern society,...
It was literary critic Lionel Trilling who quite aptly described the collective entity Jay Gatsby when he wrote, “Jay Gatsby [stands] for America itself.” Jay Gatsby lives his life entrenched in unfathomable wealth. His true roots are rather mysterious, but they revolve around an anti-Calvinistic...
F. Scott Fitzgerald uses a range of techniques in The Great Gatsby to explore the idea that it is often the most unlikely people who display acts of heroism. Many of the characters in the novel show stereotypical characteristics, but act contrary to what is...
With its unforgettable characters, unique love story and dazzling setting, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has been a popular source of inspiration for filmmakers since its publication in 1925. The six film adaptations of the novel to date vary considerably in their generally agreed...
Love relationships consume a substantial portion of public attention, whether in regards to legitimate bonds, media exposure, or literary portrayal. In The Great Gatsby, a number of love relationships are introduced and explored, including the bonds between Myrtle and George Wilson, Daisy and Tom Buchanan,...
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby completes a decline from his carefully crafted image of greatness to his exposed, unsightly, and lonely death. The story of the novel is really the deconstruction of this image, and the various ways in which the...
The American Avant-Garde poet Gertrude Stein once commented that “You are all a lost generation!” in reference to post-World War One society. Immortalized in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, the phrase has come to symbolize a unique generation in America that came of age in...
<blockquote>[G]audy … primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. … [T]he air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each...
Renowned author F. Scott Fitzgerald became “the most famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that he dubbed ‘the Jazz Age.'” (Phillips 1). His fame grew in part from his widely published short stories, and also from the art of his novel, The Great Gatsby....
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is regarded as a brilliant piece of literature that offers a vivid peek into American life in the 1920’s. The central characteristics of the “Lost Generation” of the 1920’s society are shown through the decay of the American Dream....
Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway, Daisy Buchanan, Tom Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, Jordan Baker, Meyer Wolfsheim, George B. Wilson, Trimalchio, Mr. Gatz
Based on
Inspired by the parties that Fitzgerald has attended when he was visiting Long Island's North shore, which has made him look for something that would be totally different, something that has never been written before.
Symbols/motives
decadence, idealism, resistance to changes, social excess, caution, and the American Dream.
Influence
First of all, The Great Gatsby can be considered as the most American literary work that has the very essence of being American through the eyes of Jay Gatsby or, as he would call himself, "Mr. Nobody From Nowhere". It is the greatest reflection of the American Dream, which F. Scott Fitzgerald has wisely put out on paper. It could be called a national scripture that shows the American spirit and a chance of reinventing everything.
Interesting facts
The book has sold about 25,000 copies during Fitzgerald's lifetime. However, it has sold over 25 million copies since then, making it one of the most famous American novels.
The Great Gatsby wasn't the original title as the author had several ideas from Under the Red, White and Blue to The High-Bouncing Lover, which would explain the content or tell about it way too early.
The book was made into film in 1926, which marks only a year since the book has been published.
It is believed that Fitzgerald suffered from tuberculosis and not the heart attack. He died at the age of 44.
At the time of its publication in 1925, one had to pay $2 to buy this famous novel.
The Great Gatsby has not been an instant critical success.
Fitzgerald was very bad at spelling, which has made the famous Edmund Wilson (a literary critic) call the author as "one of the most illiterate books of any merit ever published".
Plot
The Great Gatsby is the story of what an essence of American Dream means to people. It tells a tragic story of Jay Gatsby who is a self-made millionaire who came over to New York. Trying to win the heart of Daisy Buchanan, a wealthy young woman whom he knew and loved in his youth. The book can be safely called legendary as it follows Gatsby's journey from poverty to wealth while telling about the ways of love that eventually lead to death.
Quotes
“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.’”
“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”
“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”
“So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.”
“I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
Why is this topic important
If we turn to the book's foreword, we can see that it was meant to be "consciously artistic" while remaining "beautiful and simple, and intricately patterned". Originally started as a satire, Fitzgerald wanted to tell about the parties and the vanity of life that was led in certain parts of New York. It is also the Trimalchio model, a former slave who got to visit the parties. The purpose here is a tragic transformation and romance as the reflection of the American Dream.
Why should this topic be used
The reason why a college student may be asked to write an essay about The Great Gatsby is dealing with an American Dream and falling into the tragedy of poverty versus being rich and the ways how a person can become corrupted and lost. The role of Gatsby is also an American spirit, which can be compared to how so many people today are becoming trapped in money and fame to achieve success in romance. Moreover, it is one of the most American literary works where the author masterfully has crafted each sentence that shows the socio-cultural element of American life for many decades to come.
