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Essays on The Great Gatsby

The great gatsby essay topic examples.

Whether you want to analyze the American Dream, compare and contrast characters, vividly describe settings and characters, persuade readers with your viewpoints, or share personal experiences related to the story, these essay ideas provide a diverse perspective on the themes and complexities within the book.

Argumentative Essays

Argumentative essays require you to analyze and present arguments related to the novel. Here are some topic examples:

• 1. Argue whether the American Dream is achievable or illusory, as depicted in The Great Gatsby .
• 2. Analyze the moral ambiguity of Jay Gatsby and the consequences of his relentless pursuit of the American Dream.

Example Introduction Paragraph for an Argumentative Essay: F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is a tale of ambition, decadence, and the elusive American Dream. This essay delves into the complex theme of the American Dream, exploring whether it remains attainable or has transformed into a tantalizing illusion, luring individuals like Jay Gatsby into its enigmatic embrace.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for an Argumentative Essay: In conclusion, the analysis of the American Dream in The Great Gatsby invites us to reevaluate our perceptions of success and fulfillment. As we contemplate the fate of Jay Gatsby and the characters entangled in his world, we are challenged to define our own version of the American Dream and the sacrifices it may entail.

Compare and Contrast Essays

Compare and contrast essays enable you to examine similarities and differences within the novel or between it and other literary works. Consider these topics:

• 1. Compare and contrast the characters of Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, exploring their contrasting worldviews and motivations.
• 2. Analyze the similarities and differences between the portrayal of the Jazz Age in The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises .

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Compare and Contrast Essay: The characters and settings in The Great Gatsby and other literary works offer a rich tapestry for comparison and contrast. This essay embarks on a journey to compare and contrast the enigmatic Jay Gatsby and the brash Tom Buchanan, delving into their contrasting values, aspirations, and roles within the novel.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Compare and Contrast Essay: In conclusion, the comparison and contrast of Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan illuminate the divergent paths individuals can take in pursuit of their desires. As we consider the consequences of their choices, we are prompted to reflect on the complexities of ambition and morality.

Descriptive Essays

Descriptive essays allow you to vividly depict settings, characters, or events within the novel. Here are some topic ideas:

• 1. Describe the opulent parties at Gatsby's mansion, emphasizing the decadence and extravagance of the Jazz Age.
• 2. Paint a detailed portrait of Daisy Buchanan, focusing on her beauty, charm, and the allure she holds for Gatsby.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Descriptive Essay: The Great Gatsby immerses readers in the lavish world of the Roaring Twenties. This essay embarks on a descriptive exploration of the extravagant parties at Gatsby's mansion, capturing the opulence and hedonism of the era, as well as the illusions they create.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Descriptive Essay: In conclusion, the descriptive portrayal of Gatsby's parties serves as a vivid snapshot of the Jazz Age's excesses and the fleeting nature of indulgence. Through this exploration, we are reminded of the allure and transience of the materialistic pursuits that captivated the characters of the novel.

Persuasive Essays

Persuasive essays involve arguing a point of view related to the novel. Consider these persuasive topics:

• 1. Persuade your readers that Nick Carraway is the moral compass of the story, serving as the voice of reason and morality.
• 2. Argue for or against the idea that Gatsby's love for Daisy is genuine and selfless, despite his questionable methods.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Persuasive Essay: The Great Gatsby presents a tapestry of characters with complex moral dilemmas. This persuasive essay asserts that Nick Carraway emerges as the moral compass of the story, guiding readers through the labyrinth of decadence and disillusionment in the Jazz Age.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Persuasive Essay: In conclusion, the persuasive argument regarding Nick Carraway's role as the moral compass underscores the importance of ethical navigation in a world characterized by excess and moral ambiguity. As we reflect on his influence, we are compelled to consider the enduring value of integrity and virtue.

Narrative Essays

Narrative essays offer you the opportunity to tell a story or share personal experiences related to the themes of the novel. Explore these narrative essay topics:

• 1. Narrate a personal experience where you encountered the allure of materialism and extravagance, similar to the characters in The Great Gatsby .
• 2. Imagine yourself as a character in the Jazz Age and recount your interactions with Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Narrative Essay: The themes of The Great Gatsby resonate with the allure of a bygone era. This narrative essay delves into a personal encounter with the seductive pull of materialism and extravagance, drawing parallels to the characters' experiences in the novel.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Narrative Essay: In conclusion, the narrative of my personal encounter with the allure of materialism reminds us of the timeless nature of the themes in The Great Gatsby . As we navigate our own desires and ambitions, we are encouraged to contemplate the balance between aspiration and morality.

Nicks Personality in The Great Gatsby

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"The Great Gatsby": Theme and Symbols

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The Portrayal of Female Characters in F.s. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

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April 10, 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Novel; Fiction, Tragedy

Jay Gatsby , Nick Carraway, Daisy Buchanan, Tom Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, Jordan Baker, Meyer Wolfsheim, George B. Wilson, Trimalchio, Mr. Gatz

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote "The Great Gatsby" with multiple motivations in mind. Firstly, he sought to critique the materialistic excesses and moral decay of the Roaring Twenties, a period of post-World War I prosperity. Fitzgerald aimed to expose the disillusionment and hollowness behind the glittering facade of the American Dream. Additionally, he drew inspiration from his own experiences and observations of the wealthy elite and their decadent lifestyles. Through the character of Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald explored themes of unrequited love, longing, and the pursuit of an unattainable ideal. Ultimately, Fitzgerald's intent was to capture the essence of an era and offer a profound commentary on the human condition.

The story revolves around Jay Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire, and his pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, a married woman with whom he had a romantic past. Narrated by Nick Carraway, a young man from the Midwest, the novel delves into the opulent and extravagant lives of the wealthy elite in Long Island. As Gatsby throws lavish parties in the hope of rekindling his relationship with Daisy, the narrative explores themes of love, wealth, illusion, and the disillusionment that comes with the pursuit of the American Dream.

The American Dream , decadence, idealism, resistance to changes, social excess, caution.

The influence of "The Great Gatsby" extends far beyond its initial publication in 1925. F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel has become a literary classic, revered for its exploration of themes such as wealth, love, and the elusive American Dream. It remains relevant due to its timeless portrayal of human desires, societal decadence, and the consequences of relentless pursuit. The book's vivid characters and atmospheric prose have inspired countless writers and artists, shaping the landscape of American literature. With its commentary on the dark underbelly of the Jazz Age, "The Great Gatsby" continues to captivate readers, serving as a cautionary tale and a poignant reflection of the human condition.

1. During F. Scott Fitzgerald's lifetime, approximately 25,000 copies of the book were sold. However, since then, it has gained immense popularity, selling over 25 million copies and establishing itself as one of the most renowned American novels. 2. The Great Gatsby did not have its original title as the author considered various options, ranging from "Under the Red, White and Blue" to "The High-Bouncing Lover." These alternative titles were potentially revealing too much about the content prematurely. 3. In 1926, just a year after its publication, the book was adapted into a film, demonstrating its quick transition from page to screen. 4. Fitzgerald's cause of death is believed to have been tuberculosis rather than a heart attack. Sadly, he passed away at the age of 44. 5. The price of this famous novel at the time of its publication in 1925 was $2, representing its value in that era. 6. The Great Gatsby did not immediately receive critical acclaim upon release. However, it has since garnered recognition and praise, becoming a significant literary work.

"The Great Gatsby" has made a significant impact on various forms of media, captivating audiences across generations. The novel has been adapted into several films, with notable versions including the 1974 adaptation starring Robert Redford and the 2013 adaptation featuring Leonardo DiCaprio. These cinematic interpretations have brought the story to life visually, further immersing audiences in the opulent world of Jay Gatsby. Additionally, the novel has been referenced and alluded to in countless songs, television shows, and even video games, solidifying its cultural significance. Its themes of love, wealth, and the pursuit of the American Dream continue to resonate and inspire creative works in popular culture.

“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.”

Studying "The Great Gatsby" holds great importance due to its enduring relevance and literary significance. The novel offers profound insights into themes such as wealth, love, social class, and the corruption of the American Dream. Its exploration of the Jazz Age exposes the allure and emptiness of a materialistic society, making it a compelling study of human desires and societal decay. F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterful prose and symbolic imagery provide rich material for analyzing character development, narrative techniques, and social commentary. Moreover, delving into the novel's historical context allows for a deeper understanding of the cultural and societal shifts of the 1920s.

The inclusion of "The Great Gatsby" as an essay topic for college students stems from its exploration of themes like the American Dream, the juxtaposition of poverty and wealth, and the destructive allure of corruption. The character of Gatsby embodies the American spirit and can be paralleled to contemporary individuals fixated on materialism and fame as measures of romantic success. Furthermore, this literary masterpiece holds a significant place in American literature, as F. Scott Fitzgerald skillfully weaves socio-cultural elements into each sentence, providing a timeless portrayal of American life that resonates across generations. The choice to analyze and write about "The Great Gatsby" allows students to delve into these thought-provoking themes and examine their relevance to society.

1. Stallman, R. W. (1955). Conrad and The Great Gatsby. Twentieth Century Literature, 1(1), 5–12. (https://doi.org/10.2307/441023) 2. John Jerrim, Lindsey Macmillan, (2015). Income Inequality, Intergenerational Mobility, and the Great Gatsby Curve: Is Education the Key?, Social Forces, Volume 94, Issue 2. (https://academic.oup.com/sf/article/94/2/505/2583794) 3. Robert C. Hauhart (2013) Religious Language and Symbolism in The Great Gatsby’s Valley of Ashes, ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, 26:3 (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0895769X.2013.798233) 4. Burnam, T. (1952). The Eyes of Dr. Eckleburg: A Re-Examination of “The Great Gatsby.” College English, 14(1), 7–12. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/371821) 5. Tom Phillips (2018) Passing for White in THE GREAT GATSBY: A Spectroscopic Analysis of Jordan Baker, The Explicator, 76:3. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00144940.2018.1489769?scroll=top&needAccess=true&role=tab) 6. Matterson, S. (1990). The Great Gatsby and Social Class. In: The Great Gatsby. The Critics Debate. Palgrave, London. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-20768-8_9) 7. Licence, A. (2008). Jay Gatsby: martyr of a materialistic society: Amy Licence considers religious elements in The Great Gatsby. The English Review, 18(3), 24+. (https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA173676222&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=09558950&p=LitRC&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E5a84816e) 8. Khodamoradpour, Marjan and Anushiravani, Alireza, (2017) Playing the Old Tunes: A Fiskean Analysis of Baz Luhrmann's 2013 Cinematic Adaptation of the Great Gatsby. International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, Volume 71. (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3020752) 9. Anderson, H. (1968). THE RICH BUNCH IN" THE GREAT GATSBY". Southern Quarterly, 6(2), 163. (https://www.proquest.com/openview/6a9e704a476d873aada2d2529821b95a/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2029886)

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The Great Gatsby

F. scott fitzgerald, everything you need for every book you read..

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 F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The Great Gatsby Material

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The Great Gatsby Essays

Criticism, sympathy, and encouragement: depicting the american dream in 'the great gatsby' and 'enrique's journey' jessica wu 11th grade, the great gatsby.

The American dream, the belief that one will be able to achieve success through hard work and sacrifice, is an overly romanticized concept that people have been actively pursuing for decades. Many individuals set out in pursuit of their own idea...

Analysis of The Great Gatsby through the feminist theory Anonymous College

The aim of this paper is to write an analysis of The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald which was published in 1925. The first part of this essay is written based on a close reading. In the second part the feminist theory is applied to the...

The pride displayed by tragic heroes elevates them rather than diminishes them Karol Seroczynski 12th Grade

The idea that the pride displayed by tragic heroes elevates them rather than diminishes them can be proven in relation to Shakespeare’s “Richard II” and Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” In both texts the protagonists display a great deal of pride...

The Great Gatsby: The Repercussions of Private Events on Public Lives Alexandra Bayer College

Privacy is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as being the “quality or state of being apart from company or observation,” or “freedom from unauthorized intrusion.” The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald revolves around the theme of...

Foreshadowing Destiny Olivia Verma

<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...

The Eulogy of a Dream James Boo

The central theme of <I>The Great Gatsby</I> is the decay of the American Dream. Through his incisive analysis and condemnation of 1920s high society, Fitzgerald (in the person of the novels narrator, Nick Carraway) argues that the...

Materialism Portrayed By Cars in The Great Gatsby Joanna Cruz

"But as I walked down the steps I saw that the evening was not quite over. Fifty feet from the door a dozen headlights illuminated a bizarre and tumultuous scene (58)."

After the first of Gatsby's parties that Nick attends, Fitzgerald dedicates two...

Role of Narration in The Great Gatsby Steven Rice

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...

A Great American Dream Jens Shroyer

The Great Gatsby and "Babylon Revisited," both by F. Scott Fitzgerald, are stories about the emptiness and recklessness of the 1920s. Each story has its distinctions, but Fitzgerald's condemnation of the decade reverberates through both....

Restless in West Egg Anonymous

To many Americans, wealth and happiness are inextricably intertwined. After all, the democratic ideals of our country are predicated on the notion of the âself-madeâ? man. Ironically, it is sometimes the striving for wealth or the striving for...

The Death of a Dream Martha E. Andrietti

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...

The Fall of the American Dream Josh Weiss

The figurative as well as literal death of Jay Gatsby in the novel The Great Gatsby symbolizes a conclusion to the principal theme of the novel. With the end of the life of Jay Gatsby comes the end of what Fitzgerald views as the ultimate American...

Jay Gatsby's Representation of America Josh Weiss

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...

Decay of American Greatness Michael Jin

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...

Through A Lens, Darkly: The Use of Eye Imagery to Illustrate the Theme of an Extinct God in The Great Gatsby Anonymous

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...

Obsession Anonymous

In his book The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald explores the psychology of love's fantasies and realities through the character of Jay Gatsby. During their five-year separation, Gatsby pines for his love, Daisy Buchanan, rearranging his entire...

Daisy and Her Men: Analysis of Character in The Great Gatsby Ashley Smith

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...

The African American Dream B. L. Fox

Social class plays a dominant role in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. In fact the title character is living proof that the American dream really exists. Readers recognize the importance Fitzgerald places on social class throughout the...

The Shift From Realism to Modernism Anonymous

During the modernist era, artists gradually moved away from realism towards themes of illusion, consciousness, and imagination. In the visual arts, realism evolved into cubism and expressionism. This movement is paralleled in literature, as...

Gatsby and Henry: Obsession Viewed in Two Different Lenses Ruth Tangonan

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...

Money! Money! Money! Christopher R. DeConinck

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...

The Bildungsroman Form in The Great Gatsby Sagar Shah

Maturation and personal evolution of main characters typify the bildungsroman, a distinct novelistic form. The growth of characters Tom Buchanan, George Wilson, Jay Gatsby make F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and important example of the...

The significance of the end of Chapter 1 of "The Great Gatsby" Anonymous

Luminosity and spiritual longing for something that had vanished a long ago are probably the two main characteristics of the last two paragraphs in Chapter 1 of “The Great Gatsby”. The scene takes place shortly after Nick's return from dinner at...

The Great Gatsby and the Decline of the American Dream Anonymous

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...

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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. He then gets killed after being tangled up with them.

Through Gatsby's life, as well as that of the Wilsons', Fitzgerald critiques the idea that America is a meritocracy where anyone can rise to the top with enough hard work. We will explore how this theme plays out in the plot, briefly analyze some key quotes about it, as well as do some character analysis and broader analysis of topics surrounding the American Dream in The Great Gatsby .

What is the American Dream? The American Dream in the Great Gatsby plot Key American Dream quotes Analyzing characters via the American Dream Common discussion and essay topics

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.

What Exactly Is "The American Dream"?

The American Dream is the belief that anyone, regardless of race, class, gender, or nationality, can be successful in America (read: rich) if they just work hard enough. The American Dream thus presents a pretty rosy view of American society that ignores problems like systemic racism and misogyny, xenophobia, tax evasion or state tax avoidance, and income inequality. It also presumes a myth of class equality, when the reality is America has a pretty well-developed class hierarchy.

The 1920s in particular was a pretty tumultuous time due to increased immigration (and the accompanying xenophobia), changing women's roles (spurred by the right to vote, which was won in 1919), and extraordinary income inequality.

The country was also in the midst of an economic boom, which fueled the belief that anyone could "strike it rich" on Wall Street. However, this rapid economic growth was built on a bubble which popped in 1929. The Great Gatsby was published in 1925, well before the crash, but through its wry descriptions of the ultra-wealthy, it seems to somehow predict that the fantastic wealth on display in 1920s New York was just as ephemeral as one of Gatsby's parties.

In any case, the novel, just by being set in the 1920s, is unlikely to present an optimistic view of the American Dream, or at least a version of the dream that's inclusive to all genders, ethnicities, and incomes. With that background in mind, let's jump into the plot!

The American Dream in The Great Gatsby

Chapter 1 places us in a particular year—1922—and gives us some background about WWI.  This is relevant, since the 1920s is presented as a time of hollow decadence among the wealthy, as evidenced especially by the parties in Chapters 2 and 3. And as we mentioned above, the 1920s were a particularly tense time in America.

We also meet George and Myrtle Wilson in Chapter 2 , both working class people who are working to improve their lot in life, George through his work, and Myrtle through her affair with Tom Buchanan.

We learn about Gatsby's goal in Chapter 4 : to win Daisy back. Despite everything he owns, including fantastic amounts of money and an over-the-top mansion, for Gatsby, Daisy is the ultimate status symbol. So in Chapter 5 , when Daisy and Gatsby reunite and begin an affair, it seems like Gatsby could, in fact, achieve his goal.

In Chapter 6 , we learn about Gatsby's less-than-wealthy past, which not only makes him look like the star of a rags-to-riches story, it makes Gatsby himself seem like someone in pursuit of the American Dream, and for him the personification of that dream is Daisy.

However, in Chapters 7 and 8 , everything comes crashing down: Daisy refuses to leave Tom, Myrtle is killed, and George breaks down and kills Gatsby and then himself, leaving all of the "strivers" dead and the old money crowd safe. Furthermore, we learn in those last chapters that Gatsby didn't even achieve all his wealth through hard work, like the American Dream would stipulate—instead, he earned his money through crime. (He did work hard and honestly under Dan Cody, but lost Dan Cody's inheritance to his ex-wife.)

In short, things do not turn out well for our dreamers in the novel! Thus, the novel ends with Nick's sad meditation on the lost promise of the American Dream. You can read a detailed analysis of these last lines in our summary of the novel's ending .

Key American Dream Quotes

In this section we analyze some of the most important quotes that relate to the American Dream in the book.

But I didn't call to him for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone--he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward--and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. (1.152)

In our first glimpse of Jay Gatsby, we see him reaching towards something far off, something in sight but definitely out of reach. This famous image of the green light is often understood as part of The Great Gatsby 's meditation on The American Dream—the idea that people are always reaching towards something greater than themselves that is just out of reach . You can read more about this in our post all about the green light .

The fact that this yearning image is our introduction to Gatsby foreshadows his unhappy end and also marks him as a dreamer, rather than people like Tom or Daisy who were born with money and don't need to strive for anything so far off.

Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.

A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms, followed by two carriages with drawn blinds and by more cheerful carriages for friends. The friends looked out at us with the tragic eyes and short upper lips of south-eastern Europe, and I was glad that the sight of Gatsby's splendid car was included in their somber holiday. As we crossed Blackwell's Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish Negroes, two bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry.

"Anything can happen now that we've slid over this bridge," I thought; "anything at all. . . ."

Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder. (4.55-8)

Early in the novel, we get this mostly optimistic illustration of the American Dream—we see people of different races and nationalities racing towards NYC, a city of unfathomable possibility. This moment has all the classic elements of the American Dream—economic possibility, racial and religious diversity, a carefree attitude. At this moment, it does feel like "anything can happen," even a happy ending.

However, this rosy view eventually gets undermined by the tragic events later in the novel. And even at this point, Nick's condescension towards the people in the other cars reinforces America's racial hierarchy that disrupts the idea of the American Dream. There is even a little competition at play, a "haughty rivalry" at play between Gatsby's car and the one bearing the "modish Negroes."

Nick "laughs aloud" at this moment, suggesting he thinks it's amusing that the passengers in this other car see them as equals, or even rivals to be bested. In other words, he seems to firmly believe in the racial hierarchy Tom defends in Chapter 1, even if it doesn't admit it honestly.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete. (6.134)

This moment explicitly ties Daisy to all of Gatsby's larger dreams for a better life —to his American Dream. This sets the stage for the novel's tragic ending, since Daisy cannot hold up under the weight of the dream Gatsby projects onto her. Instead, she stays with Tom Buchanan, despite her feelings for Gatsby. Thus when Gatsby fails to win over Daisy, he also fails to achieve his version of the American Dream. This is why so many people read the novel as a somber or pessimistic take on the American Dream, rather than an optimistic one.  

...as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes--a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night." (9.151-152)

The closing pages of the novel reflect at length on the American Dream, in an attitude that seems simultaneously mournful, appreciative, and pessimistic. It also ties back to our first glimpse of Gatsby, reaching out over the water towards the Buchanan's green light. Nick notes that Gatsby's dream was "already behind him" then (or in other words, it was impossible to attain). But still, he finds something to admire in how Gatsby still hoped for a better life, and constantly reached out toward that brighter future.

For a full consideration of these last lines and what they could mean, see our analysis of the novel's ending .

Analyzing Characters Through the American Dream

An analysis of the characters in terms of the American Dream usually leads to a pretty cynical take on the American Dream.

Most character analysis centered on the American Dream will necessarily focus on Gatsby, George, or Myrtle (the true strivers in the novel), though as we'll discuss below, the Buchanans can also provide some interesting layers of discussion. For character analysis that incorporates the American Dream, carefully consider your chosen character's motivations and desires, and how the novel does (or doesn't!) provide glimpses of the dream's fulfillment for them.

Gatsby himself is obviously the best candidate for writing about the American Dream—he comes from humble roots (he's the son of poor farmers from North Dakota) and rises to be notoriously wealthy, only for everything to slip away from him in the end. Many people also incorporate Daisy into their analyses as the physical representation of Gatsby's dream.

However, definitely consider the fact that in the traditional American Dream, people achieve their goals through honest hard work, but in Gatsby's case, he very quickly acquires a large amount of money through crime . Gatsby does attempt the hard work approach, through his years of service to Dan Cody, but that doesn't work out since Cody's ex-wife ends up with the entire inheritance. So instead he turns to crime, and only then does he manage to achieve his desired wealth.

So while Gatsby's story arc resembles a traditional rags-to-riches tale, the fact that he gained his money immorally complicates the idea that he is a perfect avatar for the American Dream . Furthermore, his success obviously doesn't last—he still pines for Daisy and loses everything in his attempt to get her back. In other words, Gatsby's huge dreams, all precariously wedded to Daisy  ("He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God" (6.134)) are as flimsy and flight as Daisy herself.

George and Myrtle Wilson

This couple also represents people aiming at the dream— George owns his own shop and is doing his best to get business, though is increasingly worn down by the harsh demands of his life, while Myrtle chases after wealth and status through an affair with Tom.

Both are disempowered due to the lack of money at their own disposal —Myrtle certainly has access to some of the "finer things" through Tom but has to deal with his abuse, while George is unable to leave his current life and move West since he doesn't have the funds available. He even has to make himself servile to Tom in an attempt to get Tom to sell his car, a fact that could even cause him to overlook the evidence of his wife's affair. So neither character is on the upward trajectory that the American Dream promises, at least during the novel.

In the end, everything goes horribly wrong for both George and Myrtle, suggesting that in this world, it's dangerous to strive for more than you're given.

George and Myrtle's deadly fates, along with Gatsby's, help illustrate the novel's pessimistic attitude toward the American Dream. After all, how unfair is it that the couple working to improve their position in society (George and Myrtle) both end up dead, while Tom, who dragged Myrtle into an increasingly dangerous situation, and Daisy, who killed her, don't face any consequences? And on top of that they are fabulously wealthy? The American Dream certainly is not alive and well for the poor Wilsons.

Tom and Daisy as Antagonists to the American Dream

We've talked quite a bit already about Gatsby, George, and Myrtle—the three characters who come from humble roots and try to climb the ranks in 1920s New York. But what about the other major characters, especially the ones born with money? What is their relationship to the American Dream?

Specifically, Tom and Daisy have old money, and thus they don't need the American Dream, since they were born with America already at their feet.

Perhaps because of this, they seem to directly antagonize the dream—Daisy by refusing Gatsby, and Tom by helping to drag the Wilsons into tragedy .

This is especially interesting because unlike Gatsby, Myrtle, and George, who actively hope and dream of a better life, Daisy and Tom are described as bored and "careless," and end up instigating a large amount of tragedy through their own recklessness.

In other words, income inequality and the vastly different starts in life the characters have strongly affected their outcomes. The way they choose to live their lives, their morality (or lack thereof), and how much they dream doesn't seem to matter. This, of course, is tragic and antithetical to the idea of the American Dream, which claims that class should be irrelevant and anyone can rise to the top.

Daisy as a Personification of the American Dream

As we discuss in our post on money and materialism in The Great Gatsby , Daisy's voice is explicitly tied to money by Gatsby:

"Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly.

That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money--that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it. . . . High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl. . . . (7.105-6)

If Daisy's voice promises money, and the American Dream is explicitly linked to wealth, it's not hard to argue that Daisy herself—along with the green light at the end of her dock —stands in for the American Dream. In fact, as Nick goes on to describe Daisy as "High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl," he also seems to literally describe Daisy as a prize, much like the princess at the end of a fairy tale (or even Princess Peach at the end of a Mario game!).

But Daisy, of course, is only human—flawed, flighty, and ultimately unable to embody the huge fantasy Gatsby projects onto her. So this, in turn, means that the American Dream itself is just a fantasy, a concept too flimsy to actually hold weight, especially in the fast-paced, dog-eat-dog world of 1920s America.

Furthermore, you should definitely consider the tension between the fact that Daisy represents Gatsby's ultimate goal, but at the same time (as we discussed above), her actual life is the opposite of the American Dream : she is born with money and privilege, likely dies with it all intact, and there are no consequences to how she chooses to live her life in between.

Can Female Characters Achieve the American Dream?

Finally, it's interesting to compare and contrast some of the female characters using the lens of the American Dream.

Let's start with Daisy, who is unhappy in her marriage and, despite a brief attempt to leave it, remains with Tom, unwilling to give up the status and security their marriage provides. At first, it may seem like Daisy doesn't dream at all, so of course she ends up unhappy. But consider the fact that Daisy was already born into the highest level of American society. The expectation placed on her, as a wealthy woman, was never to pursue something greater, but simply to maintain her status. She did that by marrying Tom, and it's understandable why she wouldn't risk the uncertainty and loss of status that would come through divorce and marriage to a bootlegger. Again, Daisy seems to typify the "anti-American" dream, in that she was born into a kind of aristocracy and simply has to maintain her position, not fight for something better.

In contrast, Myrtle, aside from Gatsby, seems to be the most ambitiously in pursuit of getting more than she was given in life. She parlays her affair with Tom into an apartment, nice clothes, and parties, and seems to revel in her newfound status. But of course, she is knocked down the hardest, killed for her involvement with the Buchanans, and specifically for wrongfully assuming she had value to them. Considering that Gatsby did have a chance to leave New York and distance himself from the unfolding tragedy, but Myrtle was the first to be killed, you could argue the novel presents an even bleaker view of the American Dream where women are concerned.

Even Jordan Baker , who seems to be living out a kind of dream by playing golf and being relatively independent, is tied to her family's money and insulated from consequences by it , making her a pretty poor representation of the dream. And of course, since her end game also seems to be marriage, she doesn't push the boundaries of women's roles as far as she might wish.

So while the women all push the boundaries of society's expectations of them in certain ways, they either fall in line or are killed, which definitely undermines the rosy of idea that anyone, regardless of gender, can make it in America. The American Dream as shown in Gatsby becomes even more pessimistic through the lens of the female characters.  

Common Essay Questions/Discussion Topics

Now let's work through some of the more frequently brought up subjects for discussion.

#1: Was Gatsby's dream worth it? Was all the work, time, and patience worth it for him?

Like me, you might immediately think "of course it wasn't worth it! Gatsby lost everything, not to mention the Wilsons got caught up in the tragedy and ended up dead!" So if you want to make the more obvious "the dream wasn't worth it" argument, you could point to the unraveling that happens at the end of the novel (including the deaths of Myrtle, Gatsby and George) and how all Gatsby's achievements are for nothing, as evidenced by the sparse attendance of his funeral.

However, you could definitely take the less obvious route and argue that Gatsby's dream was worth it, despite the tragic end . First of all, consider Jay's unique characterization in the story: "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). In other words, Gatsby has a larger-than-life persona and he never would have been content to remain in North Dakota to be poor farmers like his parents.

Even if he ends up living a shorter life, he certainly lived a full one full of adventure. His dreams of wealth and status took him all over the world on Dan Cody's yacht, to Louisville where he met and fell in love with Daisy, to the battlefields of WWI, to the halls of Oxford University, and then to the fast-paced world of Manhattan in the early 1920s, when he earned a fortune as a bootlegger. In fact, it seems Jay lived several lives in the space of just half a normal lifespan. In short, to argue that Gatsby's dream was worth it, you should point to his larger-than-life conception of himself and the fact that he could have only sought happiness through striving for something greater than himself, even if that ended up being deadly in the end.

#2: In the Langston Hughes poem "A Dream Deferred," Hughes asks questions about what happens to postponed dreams. How does Fitzgerald examine this issue of deferred dreams? What do you think are the effects of postponing our dreams? How can you apply this lesson to your own life?

If you're thinking about "deferred dreams" in The Great Gatsby , the big one is obviously Gatsby's deferred dream for Daisy—nearly five years pass between his initial infatuation and his attempt in the novel to win her back, an attempt that obviously backfires. You can examine various aspects of Gatsby's dream—the flashbacks to his first memories of Daisy in Chapter 8 , the moment when they reunite in Chapter 5 , or the disastrous consequences of the confrontation of Chapter 7 —to illustrate Gatsby's deferred dream.

You could also look at George Wilson's postponed dream of going West, or Myrtle's dream of marrying a wealthy man of "breeding"—George never gets the funds to go West, and is instead mired in the Valley of Ashes, while Myrtle's attempt to achieve her dream after 12 years of marriage through an affair ends in tragedy. Apparently, dreams deferred are dreams doomed to fail.

As Nick Carraway says, "you can't repeat the past"—the novel seems to imply there is a small window for certain dreams, and when the window closes, they can no longer be attained. This is pretty pessimistic, and for the prompt's personal reflection aspect, I wouldn't say you should necessarily "apply this lesson to your own life" straightforwardly. But it is worth noting that certain opportunities are fleeting, and perhaps it's wiser to seek out newer and/or more attainable ones, rather than pining over a lost chance.

Any prompt like this one which has a section of more personal reflection gives you freedom to tie in your own experiences and point of view, so be thoughtful and think of good examples from your own life!

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#3: Explain how the novel does or does not demonstrate the death of the American Dream. Is the main theme of Gatsby indeed "the withering American Dream"? What does the novel offer about American identity?

In this prompt, another one that zeroes in on the dead or dying American Dream, you could discuss how the destruction of three lives (Gatsby, George, Myrtle) and the cynical portrayal of the old money crowd illustrates a dead, or dying American Dream . After all, if the characters who dream end up dead, and the ones who were born into life with money and privilege get to keep it without consequence, is there any room at all for the idea that less-privileged people can work their way up?

In terms of what the novel says about American identity, there are a few threads you could pick up—one is Nick's comment in Chapter 9 about the novel really being a story about (mid)westerners trying (and failing) to go East : "I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all--Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life" (9.125). This observation suggests an American identity that is determined by birthplace, and that within the American identity there are smaller, inescapable points of identification.

Furthermore, for those in the novel not born into money, the American identity seems to be about striving to end up with more wealth and status. But in terms of the portrayal of the old money set, particularly Daisy, Tom, and Jordan, the novel presents a segment of American society that is essentially aristocratic—you have to be born into it. In that regard, too, the novel presents a fractured American identity, with different lives possible based on how much money you are born with.

In short, I think the novel disrupts the idea of a unified American identity or American dream, by instead presenting a tragic, fractured, and rigid American society, one that is divided based on both geographic location and social class.

#4: Most would consider dreams to be positive motivators to achieve success, but the characters in the novel often take their dreams of ideal lives too far. Explain how characters' American Dreams cause them to have pain when they could have been content with more modest ambitions.

Gatsby is an obvious choice here—his pursuit of money and status, particularly through Daisy, leads him to ruin. There were many points when perhaps Gatsby ;could have been happy with what he achieved (especially after his apparently successful endeavors in the war, if he had remained at Oxford, or even after amassing a great amount of wealth as a bootlegger) but instead he kept striving upward, which ultimately lead to his downfall. You can flesh this argument out with the quotations in Chapters 6 and 8 about Gatsby's past, along with his tragic death.

Myrtle would be another good choice for this type of prompt. In a sense, she seems to be living her ideal life in her affair with Tom—she has a fancy NYC apartment, hosts parties, and gets to act sophisticated—but these pleasures end up gravely hurting George, and of course her association with Tom Buchanan gets her killed.

Nick, too, if he had been happy with his family's respectable fortune and his girlfriend out west, might have avoided the pain of knowing Gatsby and the general sense of despair he was left with.

You might be wondering about George—after all, isn't he someone also dreaming of a better life? However, there aren't many instances of George taking his dreams of an ideal life "too far." In fact, he struggles just to make one car sale so that he can finally move out West with Myrtle. Also, given that his current situation in the Valley of Ashes is quite bleak, it's hard to say that striving upward gave him pain.

#5: The Great Gatsby is, among other things, a sobering and even ominous commentary on the dark side of the American dream. Discuss this theme, incorporating the conflicts of East Egg vs. West Egg and old money vs. new money. What does the American dream mean to Gatsby? What did the American Dream mean to Fitzgerald? How does morality fit into achieving the American dream?

This prompt allows you to consider pretty broadly the novel's attitude toward the American Dream, with emphasis on "sobering and even ominous" commentary. Note that Fitzgerald seems to be specifically mocking the stereotypical rags to riches story here—;especially since he draws the Dan Cody narrative almost note for note from the work of someone like Horatio Alger, whose books were almost universally about rich men schooling young, entrepreneurial boys in the ways of the world. In other words, you should discuss how the Great Gatsby seems to turn the idea of the American Dream as described in the quote on its head: Gatsby does achieve a rags-to-riches rise, but it doesn't last.

All of Gatsby's hard work for Dan Cody, after all, didn't pay off since he lost the inheritance. So instead, Gatsby turned to crime after the war to quickly gain a ton of money. Especially since Gatsby finally achieves his great wealth through dubious means, the novel further undermines the classic image of someone working hard and honestly to go from rags to riches.

If you're addressing this prompt or a similar one, make sure to focus on the darker aspects of the American Dream, including the dark conclusion to the novel and Daisy and Tom's protection from any real consequences . (This would also allow you to considering morality, and how morally bankrupt the characters are.)

#6: What is the current state of the American Dream?

This is a more outward-looking prompt, that allows you to consider current events today to either be generally optimistic (the American dream is alive and well) or pessimistic (it's as dead as it is in The Great Gatsby).

You have dozens of potential current events to use as evidence for either argument, but consider especially immigration and immigration reform, mass incarceration, income inequality, education, and health care in America as good potential examples to use as you argue about the current state of the American Dream. Your writing will be especially powerful if you can point to some specific current events to support your argument.

What's Next?

In this post, we discussed how important money is to the novel's version of the American Dream. You can read even more about money and materialism in The Great Gatsby right here .

Want to indulge in a little materialism of your own? Take a look through these 15 must-have items for any Great Gatsby fan .

Get complete guides to Jay Gatsby , George Wilson and Myrtle Wilson to get even more background on the "dreamers" in the novel.

Like we discussed above, the green light is often seen as a stand-in for the idea of the American Dream. Read more about this crucial symbol here .

Need help getting to grips with other literary works? Take a spin through our analyses of The Crucible , The Cask of Amontillado , and " Do not go gentle into this good night " to see analysis in action. You might also find our explanations of point of view , rhetorical devices , imagery , and literary elements and devices helpful.

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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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Great Gatsby Essay: The Pursuit of the American Dream

• Great Gatsby Essay: The Pursuit…

A major theme in The Great Gatsby is the pursuit of what can be termed the American dream. Do you agree? By choosing a major character or a situation in Fitzgerald’s novel, discuss how or whether Fitzgerald is successful in exposing the underside of the American dream)

This represents the idea of the American Dream, where qualities of hard work and ambition are shown. The novel The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald embodies many themes; however, the most significant one relates to the corruption of the American dream.

The American Dream is defined as someone starting low on the economic or social level, and working hard towards prosperity and or wealth and fame. By having money, a car, a big house, nice clothes, and a happy family symbolizes the American dream. This dream also represents that people, no matter who he or she is, can become successful in life by his or her own work.

The desire to strive for what one wants can be accomplished if they work hard enough. The dream is represented by the idea of a self-sufficient man or woman, who works hard to achieve a goal to become successful. The Great Gatsby is a novel that shows what happened to the American Dream in the 1920’s, which is a time period when the dreams became corrupted for many reasons.

The American dream not only causes corruption but has caused destruction. Myrtle, Gatsby and Daisy have all been corrupted and destroyed by the dream.

The desire for a luxurious life is what lures Myrtle into having an affair with Tom. This decision harms her marriage with George, which leads to her death and loss of true happiness. Myrtle has the hope and desire for a perfect, wealthy and famous type of life.  She enjoys reading gossip magazines which represent her hope for the life of “the rich and famous”.

This shows how the one reason she wants to be with Tom, is because he represents the life of “the rich and famous”. When Myrtle first got married to George Wilson, she thought that she was crazy about him and thought that they were happy being together. Myrtle says, “The only crazy I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake.

He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in, and never told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he was out…” (Fitzgerald, 37) This shows how materialistic Myrtle is, and that she didn’t appreciate how George couldn’t afford his own suit to get married in. She looks at Tom in a different way. She looks at him as someone who can afford to buy their own suit for their own wedding. Myrtle is attracted to not only Tom’s appearance but his money as well.

She believes that Tom is the ideal picture-perfect man that represents the advertisement of the American Dream. Myrtle is considered to be lower class, as she doesn’t have a lot of money. Myrtle sleeps with Tom to inch her way to an upper-class status. People who are upper class are the ones that have money, drive fancy cars, and have nice big houses. Myrtle isn’t one of those people but desires to be one of them. This, later on, causes destruction and destroys Myrtle.

It was later found that Daisy was the one that hit Myrtle with her car which resulted in the death of Myrtle. It is ironic that Daisy was the one that killed her, since Myrtle was having an affair with her husband, Tom. This shows how the desire for a luxurious life and having the American dream, only caused destruction in this novel and destroyed someone’s life.

The hope for happiness is something that Daisy hoped to have, but finding out she married the wrong man changed who she is and her outlook on life. Early on in the novel, Daisy finds out a secret that Tom is hiding from her. Jordan says, “She might have the decency not to telephone him a dinner time.

Don’t you think?” (Fitzgerald, 20) Tom got a call from some women at dinner time, and Jordan claims that the woman is Tom’s, suggesting that he is sleeping with someone else. You learn throughout the novel that Tom and Daisy’s relationship is not to most ideal, happy relationship. Tom seems to be abusive towards her and rather does not seem to care much about her. Daisy thinks she has everything, wealth, love, and happiness which all tie into the American dream, but then she discovers that she has nothing and that she has been corrupted by this specific dream.

She thought she has all she desired but truly realized she had nothing. She has a child, who does not seem important to her at all. The child is never around, which shows a lot about Daisy. When her child was born, Daisy said “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 fool.” (Fitzgerald, 22)

Daisy basically explained that there are limited possibilities for women, and she would have rather had a boy. The baby has to be a beautiful fool in order to be happy and successful. Woman back in the 1920’s all married for money, and not necessarily love. Daisy thought she had loved when she married Tom, but truly in the long run, only came out with money.

With Gatsby, Daisy realized something that broke her heart. When reunited with Gatsby, who she has not seen in about five years Daisy breaks down and starts to cry. “They’re such beautiful shirts, it makes me sad because I’ve never seen such – such beautiful shirts before.” (Fitzgerald, 89) At this time Daisy realizes that she did marry for money and not for love.

She figures out that she could have married for money with Gatsby but would have had love too. The chase for the American dream and the ideal man to be with destroyed Daisy’s happiness.

The ambition for something has thrown Gatsby over the edge. His love and chase for Daisy have taken over his whole life. He feels that he has to live up to the American dream to accomplish what he truly dreams for, which is Daisy. While Gatsby was away fighting in the war, Daisy met Tom and married him.

Daisy had always been rich and Gatsby thought that in order to get Daisy back, he needs to have money so that he would be able to give Daisy anything she wanted. There was a green light where Daisy lived that Gatsby would always look out for.

The green light is of great significance in this novel. It becomes evident that this green light is not Daisy, but a symbol representing Gatsby’s dream of having Daisy. The fact that Daisy falls short of Gatsby’s expectations is obvious. Knowing this, one can see that no matter how hard Gatsby tries to live his fantasy, he will never be able to achieve it.

Through close examination of the green light, one may learn that the force that empowers Gatsby to follow his lifelong aspiration is that of the American Dream. Fitzgerald uses the green light as a symbol of hope, money, and jealousy.  Gatsby looks up to the American dream and follows it so he can be the picture-perfect man that every girl desires.

Gatsby cares a lot about how people see him, and his appearance towards others. He wants everything to look perfect for Daisy, as he wants Daisy to view him as a perfect man. “We both looked down at the grass – there was a sharp line where my ragged lawn ended and the darker, well-kept expanse of his began. I suspected he meant my grass.” (Fitzgerald, 80)

This presents the theme of appearance vs. reality and how Gatsby wants everything to look nice and presentable when he meets up with Daisy for the first time in five years. Gatsby becomes corrupted because his main goal is to have Daisy. He needs to have an enormous mansion so he could feel confident enough to try and get Daisy. Gatsby was blinded by the American dream and as a result of this, cause the destruction of Gatsby himself. He didn’t end up getting what he wanted because the American dream took over who he truly was.

The American dream is a powerful dream that was significant in the novel The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald. It was evident that this dream only truly caused corruption and destruction. The desire for something sometimes causes people to be someone they are not and this usually does not result in a positive outcome.

The American Dream is defined as someone starting low on the economic or social level, and working hard towards prosperity and or wealth and fame. Most characters in the novel The Great Gatsby all wanted money, wealth, and happiness and would do anything in their power to get this.

The Great Gatsby is a novel that shows what happened to the American Dream in the 1920s, which is a time period when the dreams became corrupted. The American dream not only causes corruption but has caused destruction.

Myrtle, Gatsby, and Daisy have all been corrupted and destroyed by the dream and it was clear to be true. Money cannot buy you happiness which is something that the three characters in the novel The Great Gatsby truly did not realize.

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• The Great Gatsby Essay: Lies And Deception
• The Great Gatsby: Jay Gatsby Character Analysis
• The Great Gatsby: Corruption of the American Dream in the 1920’s

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Tutor and Freelance Writer. Science Teacher and Lover of Essays. Article last reviewed: 2022 | St. Rosemary Institution © 2010-2024 | Creative Commons 4.0

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89 The Great Gatsby : Best Topics and Examples

Looking for some creative titles for The Great Gatsby essay? There are many themes to explore about this novel. We offer you The Great Gatsby essay examples about symbolism, character analysis, the style of the novel, and many other topics.

📙 The Great Gatsby – Essay Writing Tips

🏆 the great gatsby essay titles – top 15, 🍸 catchy essay topics for the great gatsby, ❓ great gatsby essay questions, 🎁 other the great gatsby essay titles.

The Great Gatsby, the masterpiece written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, will help you dive into the Roaring Twenties’ wealth atmosphere. This is a story of a millionaire Jay Gatsby and his passion for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan

Your professor may ask you to analyze topics such as decadence, money, American Dream, or symbolism in your The Great Gatsby Essay. But what if you have no idea what to write? Well, below, you can find some tips and essay samples that you may use to compose your papers

Tip #1. Analyze symbolism in The Great Gatsby

First, let’s define what symbolism is. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, symbolism is “practice of using symbols, especially by investing things with a symbolic meaning or by expressing the invisible or intangible using visible or sensuous representations.” The Great Gatsby story is full of symbols. And here are just two examples of them:

• The eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg painted on a billboard in the Valley of Ashes. You can find a lot of The Great Gatsby essay samples that draw the conclusion that Eckleburg represents God. However, let’s ask a few more questions. Why do these eyes have no mouth or arms, or legs? Does this mean that Eckleburg can only watch people transgressions without any ability to punish them as a God-like entity? Does this billboard mean anything?
• Use of color in Fitzgerald’s story. If you carefully read the novel, you might notice the use of a few colors throughout the book. They are green, gray, gold, and yellow. Think, what do these colors can symbolize and represent these ideas in your paper.

Tip #2. Think about point of view in The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is written in the first-person point of view. Nick Carraway, one of the main characters, tells us about the life and thoughts of Gatsby. In your writing, you can imagine how different the novel would be if it were told in the third-person point of view.

You also can provide some examples if the story was told from Gatsby’s perspective.

Tip #3. Assess how the book relates to the American Dream

If you look through the vast majority The Great Gatsby essay titles, you can find out plenty of samples that address the validity of high society or the social class divide. Gatsby had achieved the American Dream by building his wealth. However, he’s still not satisfied with the shallowness of the upper class and wants something more.

In your paper, you can argue why does one can never attain the American Dream, and why dreamers always want more.

Tip #4. Analyze the characters and their relations

Fitzgerald put each character into the novel for a particular reason. And your job is to analyze what they represent and why they are in the story. For example, Tom represents evil, while Daisy represents innocence. Another aspect you should examine is relationships between Daisy and Gatsby, Tom and Daisy, Nick and Gatsby.

Tip #5. Examine the tone of the novel

When we talk about the tone of the story, we mean how the author describes the events and characters. In your paper, decide what the tone of the novel is and analyze how it affects the readers’ attitude to characters and events.

Now, check The Great Gatsby essay examples below and use the acquired ideas to write your own paper!

• Tom and Gatsby: Compare and Contrast Essay In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald pays attention to the relationships between both Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan and Daisy Buchanan. Scott Fitzgerald’s book is mainly focused on the relationship of Daisy with Gatsby and Tom, […]
• Daisy Buchanan: “I Did Love Him Once, but I Loved You, Too” Another scene shows Daisy’s immoral behavior when she is in the room with Gatsby, Jordan, and Nick. This view shows Daisy’s lustful side in that she pushes Jordan to do the same and is out […]
• The Clock as a Symbol in “The Great Gatsby” By incorporating metaphorical elements that allude to the fleeting nature of time, “the Great Gatsby” emphasizes the idea of the futility of life and the inescapability of the past and its mistakes.
• Analysis of the Shirt Scene in “The Great Gatsby” Film Although the shirts mean nothing to Gatsby without Daisy, the audience watches Gatsby’s facial expression display a great deal of empathy and love whenever Daisy seems distressed, especially in this scene when she begins to […]
• Silver & Gold: Color Symbolism in The Great Gatsby Although the color palette presented in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is rich, the problem of differing social status is most vividly described in the novel through the use of golden and silver colors that stand […]
• The Great Gatsby Reflection Paper Throughout the novel the major character Nick who was the narrator managed to bring out the main themes of the novel as well as developing other characters.
• Nick as the Narrator in The Great Gatsby Therefore, his connection with the Gatsby’s story is that he is depended upon to serve as the mouthpiece of the older generation as he metaphorically transcends through time to retell the Great Gatsby tale accurately […]
• The Great Gatsby: Analysis and Feminist Critique The feminist critique is an aspect that seeks to explore the topic of men domination in the social, economic, and political sectors.
• Daisy’s Character Study in “The Great Gatsby” The argument is that the author attempts to describe her as a pure and innocent female to ensure that the reader understands the perspective of Jay, but particular aspects of her true identity are revealed […]
• The Great Gatsby and Winter Dreams by Scott Fitzgerald In this analysis, the researcher will try to confirm the argument that the Great Gatsby was a continuation of the Winter Dreams.
• American Culture in the Novel “The Great Gatsby” In The Great Gatsby, Scott Fitzgerald documents these changes through an in-depth exploration of cultural changes such as the rise in consumerism, materialism, greed for wealth, and the culture of loosening morals in the 1920s […]
• Gatsby & Nick in The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby is a novel of vibrant characters, and paradox is one of the main themes of the book. Even though Daisy and Tom are married, Nick agrees to help Gatsby be with the […]
• The Great Gatsby All these characteristics of America during 1920 are evident and inherent in the main character, Jay Gatsby, in the novel The Great Gatsby. This is one of the themes in the novel The Great Gatsby.
• The American Dream in The Great Gatsby After spending some time in this neighborhood, Nick finally attends Gatsby’s exuberant parties only to realize that Gatsby organizes these parties to impress Daisy, Nick’s cousin, and wife to Tom.
• Why is Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby a Satire? Another aspect of satire in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is the wealth associated with Gatsby, as the reader observes in chapter two.
• “The Great Gatsby” Film by Baz Luhrmann The Great Gatsby is a film that stars Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway, Tom Buchanan, and the Southern Belle Daisy. The influence of the past comes out throughout the course of the film.
• Female Characters in A Streetcar Named Desire & The Great Gatsby: Comparative It can be seen in the case of Stella and Daisy wherein in their pursuit of what they think is their “ideal” love, they are, in fact, pursuing nothing more than a false ideal that […]
• Autobiographical Elements in “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The story is set during the roaring twenties, a period of significant social and cultural change, and it incorporates many of the author’s personal experiences, feelings, and perceptions of the time.
• Time as a Theme in The Great Gatsby The embodiment of these negative aspects comes in the form of Gatsby and his life, which in the end is seen as hollow and empty, just as the morals and values of the characters seen […]
• “The Great Gatsby” by Scott Fitzgerald Who will take care of the dead creatures seems not to be in Tom’s order of what to bother him and together with the wife is comfortable enjoying their wealth while the creatures are rotting […]
• Fairy Tale Traits in The Great Gatsby Basing on the several evident parameters, for instance, the character traits, the behavior of prince and princess, and gender distinctions amongst others, Fitzgerald’s masterwork stands out as a variation and sophisticated version of the fairy […]
• “The Great Gatsby”: The American Dream in the Jazz Age The Jazz Age is a period in the history of the United States of America from the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression due to the remarkable popularity of […]
• Women’s Role in “The Great Gatsby” by Fitzgerald Though the women in the novel are depicted as careless, treacherous, and selfish, the author uses them to underscore the power of the will to rebel against societal norms in pursuit of happiness.
• The Corrupted American Dream and Its Significance in “The Great Gatsby” The development of the American dream and its impact on the society of the United States is a pertinent topic of discussion for various authors.
• “The Great Gatsby” Novel by Francis Scott Fitzgerald However, what the reader should acknowledge is that the author manages to present a wholesome and clear image of the issues and occurrences that defined the United States throughout the 1920s.
• The Dilemmas of the American Dream in The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby is a story of a young man in the early twentieth century who seems to know what he wants in the way of that dream and what to do to achieve it.
• Architecture in “The Great Gatsby” by Fitzgerald From this perspective, the case of Gatsby’s mansion is a symbolic call for leaving behind the anachronistic ideas of aristocracy and embracing American ideals.
• The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald Review Gatsby’s dream to become wealthy to gain Daisy’s attention “is simply believable and is still a common dream of the current time”. However, Gatsby is the story’s main character and is a “personification” of the […]
• Fertile Questions: “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald The two fertile questions arising from the novel are: what are political and economic impacts of the World War I? and what are the challenges faced by American students born from poor families post-World War […]
• Impressions of “The Great Gatsby” by Fitzgerald The contact between Gatsby and Nick is unique and consequently flavors the narrative. Global controversies such as depression are excluded from the narrative of hedonistic affluence and moral bankruptcy.
• Tom and George in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby At the same time, the motives of Tom and George’s behavior differ due to their backgrounds, origins, and belonging to different social classes.
• “The Great Gatsby Directed” by Baz Luhrmann This is due to the fact that the film is an indirect adaptation of Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald’s book “The Great Gatsby”.
• Jay Gatsby: The Great Fool or the Unfortunate Genius The main idea of the work is to show the unfairness of the fate of a poor young man who cannot marry the girl he loves.
• Novel Analysis: The Great Gatsby and Siddhartha Hesse’s Siddhartha seems complementary to The Great Gatsby as Brahman, the main role in Siddhartha, finds contentment in self-realization and not in money, sensuality, and love.
• Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’, Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’ and the American Dream “The America Dream’ is a longstanding common belief of the American population that in the United States, people are free to realize the full potential of their labor and their talents and every person in […]
• Characters in Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” and Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” The author presents challenges faced in the society as a result of the mixture racial and gender discrimination that a young black girl goes through in search of her dream and personal identity.
• Greene’s “Our Man in Havana” and “The Great Gatsby” by Fitzgerald It is imperative to realize that the purpose of the paper is not to carry out a critical analysis of the plays but to carry out a comparison of the attributes in which they relate […]
• What Money Cannot Buy: ‘The Great Gatsby’ Book by F. S. Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby is a book that unveils the instrumental role of the social aspect of life among people; which not only concentrates on the economic part of it.
• “The Great Gatsby” by Baz Luhrmann The filmmakers never stop depicting Gatsby’s wealth and his otherness. He throws money around and he is a topic of heated debates in the society.
• First-Person Narrative in Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” Joyce’s “The Boarding House,” Bowen’s “The Demon Lover” In Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Joyce’s short story “The Boarding House,” and the Scottish poem The Demon Lover, the first-person narrative is used differently to achieve the authors’ objectives and create a comprehensive picture of […]
• First-Person Narrative in Bowen’s ”The Demon Lover,” Updike’s ”A&P,” Fitzgerald’s ”The Great Gatsby” In this work, the unworked, repressed experience of the First World War is personified and embodied in the image of the ghost of a person who died in this war.
• “The Great Gatsby” by Fitzgerald: Betrayal, Romance, Social Politics and Feminism This work seeks to outline the role of women in the development of the plot of the book and in relation to the social issues affecting women in contemporary society.
• Jay Gatsby, Jean Valjean and Henry Fleming: The Compare and Contrast Analyses of the Characters The way the characters of the main protagonists are revealed in the novel is one of the most important things in every piece of literature.
• Alvarez’ “In the Time of the Butterflies” & Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” The shallowness, the injustice, the strive for wealth and power, brutality, and greed are the common themes, developed and explored in the books by Julia Alvarez “In the Time of The Butterflies” and by F.
• Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” Jay Gatsby’s tragic flaw is related to his na ve way of thinking that implies his belief in the ability to buy true feelings.
• ‘The Great Gatsby’ and ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ Literature Comparison Stella is a devoted wife struggling to make her marriage work, even though her husband Stanley, subjects her to a lot of pain and suffering.
• The Great Gatsby’ by Scott Fitzgerald Literature Analysis This is one of the details that can be identified. This is one of the issues that can be singled out.
• Political Satire in American Literature Scott Fitzgerald was one of the more famous satirists of the time, particularly in his production of the work The Great Gatsby.
• The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald In the novel, the fictional village of West Egg is perhaps one of the key items that symbolize the life of the new millionaires in the city.
• ‘The Great Gatsby’: Tom and Blanche Like Tom, Blanche in the book of Street Car Named Desire, is loyal to her sister who is the only member of her family that we come across.
• Gatsby & Jean Valjean He is a mysterious person, and no one exactly knows his origins and the ways he used to acquire his fortune.
• The Ethicality of an Action Jay Gatsby As well, an action is “wrong” if it results in the opposite of happiness to the people. Mill’s utilitarian theory can be used to assess the ethically of Jay Gatsby’s action, as presented in the […]
• Babylon Revisited & The Great Gatsby: Motifs & Themes When he pleads his case to the guardians of Honoria, his sister-in-law Marion, and her husband, he continually evades his escapades of the past and recounts his hard work and sincerity of the present.
• Francis Scott Fitzgerald & His American Dream In the novel “Tender is the Night,” Fitzgerald describes the society in Riviera where he and his family had moved to live after his misfortune of late inheritance.
• Jay Gatsby & Eponine From Les Miserables: Compare & Contrast Gatsby is the main character in the book “The Great Gatsby,” while Eponine is one of the characters in the book “Les Miserables”.
• Jay Gatsby & Gean Valjean: Characters Comparison This essay compares and contrasts the characters of Gatsby and Jean Valjean in the Les Miserable novels and films. Gatsby strikes the readers as a na ve and lovesick individual though his character is negative.
• Jay Gatsby and Valjean in ‘Les Miserables’: Comparative Valjean’s life contains a series of misfortunes in the sense that he has to hide his true identity. Most of the people in his life were there just for convenience and for the fact that […]
• The Idea of Love in The Great Gatsby and the Parallels or Contrasts That Can Be Drawn With the Presentation of Love in The Catcher in the Rye Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Jerome Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, it is possible to state that the notion of love is presented there similarly even though the texts are absolutely different and […]
• Fitzgerald’s American Dream in The Great Gatsby & Winter Dreams To my mind, Winter Dream is a perfect example of the American Dream, since the main hero, Dexter, implemented each point of it, he was persistent and very hard-working, he was a very sensible and […]
• What Destroyed Gatsby’s Dreams in “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald?
• How Far Does “The Great Gatsby” Demonstrate a View of the American Dream?
• What Is a Good Thesis Statement for“The Great Gatsby”?
• What Is “The Great Gatsby” Main Message?
• Is “The Great Gatsby” a Real Story?
• How “The Great Gatsby” Is a Replica of America?
• Why Is “The Great Gatsby” So Famous?
• What Are the Four Major Themes in “The Great Gatsby”?
• How Does “The Great Gatsby” Explore the Ideas of Illusion Versus Reality?
• How Does “The Great Gatsby” Compare to the Life of Fitzgerald?
• What Going From West to East Meant for the Characters in “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald?
• How Does “The Great Gatsby” Portray the Death of the American Dream?
• How Does Tom Buchanan Represent 1920’s Society in “The Great Gatsby”?
• How and Why Does F. Scott Fitzgerald Use Nick Carraway as His Narrator of “The Great Gatsby”?
• How New Money and Women Are Marginalized in “The Great Gatsby”?
• What Part Does Social Class Play in “The Great Gatsby”?
• What Makes “The Great Gatsby” a Classic?
• Does Fitzgerald Condemn the American Dream in “The Great Gatsby”?
• What Does the Green Light Symbolize in “The Great Gatsby”?
• How Women Are Portrayed in “The Great Gatsby”?
• What Techniques Does Fitzgerald Use to Convey the Main Themes in “The Great Gatsby”?
• Why Did Fitzgerald Write “The Great Gatsby”?
• How Does Nick Carraway Narrate “The Great Gatsby”?
• What Is “The Great Gatsby” Actually About?
• What Social Problems Are Exposed in “The Great Gatsby”?
• How Multiple Incidents Develop the Plot Line in “The Great Gatsby”?
• Does Money Buy Love in “The Great Gatsby”?
• How Has Fitzgerald Used Cars as a Motif in “The Great Gatsby”?
• Is “The Great Gatsby” Still Relevant Today?
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The Great Gatsby Essay TDA Writing Prompts, Grading Rubrics, & Prewriting Tasks

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In this resource, students will conduct a literary analysis of  The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald  and write a  TDA Essay  using textual evidence to support their responses.

There are TWO writing options students can choose from for this Response to Literature/TDA essay.

Included in this product you will get one copy of the following each as PDFs  (ready to print)  as well as one copy of the following each as WORD Documents (as to be  editable   for teachers ).

• Essay Prompts for two different topics on the novel  The Great Gatsby
• Two Prewriting Graphic Organizers for students to brainstorm ideas, thesis, examples, and textual evidence
• TDA Essay Rubric broken down into categories: content, focus, organization, style, conventions, and format

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Richard Marriott English

English Lecturing and Tutoring

The Great Gatsby Sample Essay

This sample essay demonstrates the full range of A-level skills needed to meet the assessment objectives at the highest level.

“They’re a rotten crowd.” I shouted across the lawn. “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.” How does Fitzgerald convey a “rotten crowd” in The Great Gatsby and to what effect?

“Rotten” describes a state of putrefaction. It is a word we apply to decomposing fruit, fruit that is over-ripe, decaying and which, close-up, stinks. What a brilliant word to convey the decaying civilisation of post-war Europe and America that surrounds Gatsby – and repulses his friend, Nick – shocking him into moral awareness.

It is primarily through the moral judgements of his narrator, Nick Carraway, – the character that goes East to make money only to retreat revolted by the moral, cultural and social rottenness that he finds among the moneyed classes he wished to join – that Fitzgerald presents his “rotten crowd.” Through Nick, Fitzgerald exercises his narrative art with extraordinary compression: cultural allusion and symbolic names and images are central to his method – underpinning the actions of his characters – so too a poet’s feel for the sound and connotations of words.

Fitzgerald’s allusive method brilliantly conveys the rottenness of Gatsby’s crowd. Names, and names of books allude to a rotten world. Relationships in the East are rotten and infect the outlying members of the great Carraway dynasty: Nick’s second cousin twice removed is married to a philanderer; already unfaithful on honeymoon, we find him in the second chapter introducing Nick to his mistress. Now, the great Gatsby himself has been no monk (he ‘knew women early’ (82) Nick tells us, momentarily picturing a proud and promiscuous young Gatsby), but in pursuing Daisy, he pursues more than sex: he wishes to attain a higher state of being – to ‘romp with the mind of God,’ to ‘gulp down the milk of wonder.’ Romping and gulping suggests a child’s wide-eyed amoral appetite for unbounded satisfaction. Tom’s rottenness, his sexual corruption, then is apparent by contrast with the sublime, high-minded aspirations of the man who would cuckold him. Taking then, Nick, to the apartment where he conducts his affair, Tom leaves Nick while he and Myrtle both disappear – presumably to the bedroom – before reappearing after Nick has had time to ‘read a chapter’ of Simon Called Peter . A chapter-read is an innovative way to measure the length of a human coupling and perhaps degrades (reveals the rottenness of) Tom’s relationship in its brevity (or in its longevity, reveals the rotter luxuriating in his sin) – but more importantly, it is through the title of the book that Fitzgerald reveals the rottenness of this crowd. Robert Keable’s 1922 best-seller records the career of an earnest young clergyman, Peter Graham who volunteers as an army chaplain in the First World War. His faith fails to sustain him on the path of righteousness and he abandons his nice middle class fiancée, Hilda, for the generous charms of a prostitute and a generation of young women whose sexual freedom is more aligned to the Myrtles of Gatsby than the prim propriety of Hilda and the Edwardian England Peter has left behind. However, Peter is not simply a lost cause to the church, he is disillusioned with its teachings and with human nature, the sexual freedoms and easy pleasures of the war generations seem to him more real, more essentially human than the morality he preached from the bible. The novel, condemned in his review as ‘immoral’ by Fitzgerald, is seriously concerned with what war reveals of essential human nature: its immorality, its pessimism lies in its disillusion with love. Fitzgerald’s Gatsby holds on to his aspirations, his faith in the possibility of transcendence through love, despite the hardships of his (quickly overcome!) poverty. It is perhaps only through the contrast with Keable’s response to war that we can appreciate the extraordinary hope implicit in Fitzgerald’s, in his faith in the higher callings and aspirations of the human heart. It would be interesting to know if Fitzgerald had a particular chapter in mind that “didn’t make any sense to [Nick].”

Thus, almost passing reference to a contemporary novel, is fraught with much meaning. The use of a character’s reading material to shape and create meaning is a familiar part of the novelist’s art: think Austen’s Catherine Morland, gently mocked by her author for her indulgence in The Mysteries of Udolfo and the power it has over her imagination. This allusive method is not surprising in Fitzgerald: it is the foundation of Eliot’s “The Waste Land” –a poem Fitzgerald knew by heart, written in the year he sets his Gatsby . In it, the morality, the spiritual condition, of one generation is measured against representative cultural fragments from earlier civilisations.

Fitzgerald is similarly wide-ranging in his frame of reference to convey his “rotten crowd,” alluding to contemporary novels and events as well as ancient texts. Take the casual naming of just one party-goer for example: Ismay. Ismay is collected up as part of a group: “the Ismays and the Christies.” Perhaps Fitzgerald has in mind Bruce Ismay, Managing Director, of the White Star Line and held to blame for the greatest shipping disaster of all time: the loss of the Titanic in 1912; he was J Brute Ismay to the press at the time. He was rumoured to have put pressure on the Chief Engineer to drive the ship faster for a record time for the Atlantic Crossing and was himself a survivor. Newspaper cartoons showed him watching the ship sink from the safety of a lifeboat whilst the true “women and children first” heroes stood facing death on the doomed ship. So, Ismay comes to represent the selfish, self-serving rottenness of Fitzgerald’s contemporary society and the inversion of its moral values.

Ismay is among the first of the East Eggers on Nick’s famous list that helpfully divides the party guests into two according to the Egg whence they arrive: East Egg is the old money (Jesmond) in our local terms; West Egg is new money (we think Darras Hall). The West Eggers are “all connected with the movies in one way or another.”  So one “controlled films Par Excellence” another is a “promoter” (and at the Chapter VI party we meet “the moving-picture director and his Star” (89)). In contemporary – and non-party political terms we find in West Egg the New Labour celebrity culture of film stars, pop stars, and fashion designers as well as the stalwart Old Labour of the Trade Union movement meeting at Blair’s parties: it would be a mistake to believe either group is any more free from corruption than Gatsby’s guests.  Fitzgerald’s crowd fills up the “empty spaces of a timetable” (52) that is now out of date. And their “gray” names assigns them to the ash heaps of The Valley of the Ashes – where the detritus of a dead civilisation is dumped.

The whole list in its conception is a brilliant tribute to writers of the past: “the Prince of something, whom we called Duke, and whose name, if ever I knew it, I have forgotten” concludes the roll with a wonderful contempt for empty title (“of something”) and undeserved respect (“whom we called”). The forgotten name that concludes his portrait echoes Chaucer’s final valediction on his Merchant:

For sothe (truly) he was a worthy man with alle, in every way But, sooth (truth) to seyn, I noot (= ne woot, don’t know )how men hym calle.

“I noot how men hym calle,” he is in other words unworthy of name or remembering. Of all writers, Chaucer is so especially concerned with a man’s worth, (the word is used ironically in the quotation above) his worthiness, the parity between the inner and the outer man. The choice of the Merchant is apt: he represents financial rottenness, self-serving material greed.

The last line of all in Nick’s guest list, “All these people came to Gatsby’s house in the summer,” in its obvious summing up of what we already knows echoes Homer’s method in the famous muster of the armies at the beginning of The Iliad , (e.g. “These were the men whom Amphimachus and Nastes brought.”). The very idea of remembering each with some anecdote of their deeds is again Homeric – but how unedifying their deeds: fighting with bums, drunk on the gravel, arriving with another’s wife, run over by Mrs. Ulysses Swett. The name Ulysses is enough to point us to our Homer. This “rotten crowd” is mocked in comparison to the Greek Heroes of the great ancient civilization of the past: the one at its heroic zenith, the other at its rotten nadir.

Plenty of food then for scholars wishing to track down all these names and associations. Ulysses Swett is in fact a real person (born 1868) and a member of the famous Swett family of Cape Cod who traced themselves back through thirteen generation. However, the names have an immediate, not just a scholarly impact. Swett (homophone for a squalid bodily function) is allied with Belcher (the, what, shamelessly, insolent expulsion of stomach gas through the mouth?– usually avoided because of the bad smell) and Smirke (the silent mocking laugh) – all aspects of our base corporeal rather than spiritual natures.

Worse are the animal names: Blackbuck, Roebuck, connoting both money (buck=dollar) and animal sexuality (a buck is a male deer – like the word ‘tup’ we make the gender distinction usually to refer to sexual behaviour). The name ‘Blackbuck’ perhaps evokes Tom’s fear of the Rise of the Colored Empires , of the sexual potency of black races according to popular myth and also a fear of the black dollar, of black wealth as a part of rising black supremacy. So the names have a resonance that goes beyond the animals and fish they denote (Beluga, Whitebait, Hammer Head – it is easy fit them into a taxonomical classification). It is fun to learn from Wikipedia that the Beluga whale has a ‘high-pitched twitter.’ Such information adds another dimension to our own imagined constructions of Gatsby’s party crowd. But the name itself seems ugly. Is it because it has the consonants of the word ‘ugly’ in it? Or because, as we search to make sense of an unfamiliar word, our brains try out the word ‘bulge’ through the association of sound and thus evoke some ungainly swollen creature, some ulcerous tumescence of money and immorality. Is there something belchy in the sudden release of air in the second vowel sound, Bel u ga? And that is before we think about the associations with caviar and the untouchable luxuries of the war-time rich.

And then there are the Hammerheads: another wonderfully evocative name. What rottenness does this conjure? A family of boneheads. The Hammerhead Shark has evolved an elongated and flattened skull perhaps for the manipulation of prey – nice associations there. It also contains the idea of the tool after which the shark is named, the hammer, blunt bludgeoning instrument. Picture it here in the hands of one of Gatsby’s bootlegging cronies, crushing the skull of some unfortunate prey. Hear in its sounds, the repeated glottal fricatives, (‘ Ha mmer hea d’) the heavy breathing of the hammer-wielder exerting himself in the act of skull-crushing.

There is a poetry in this carefully constructed mock epic that delights in the cultural allusion, in the connotative capacity and the phonological features of words to express the sheer rottenness of this crowd.

Fitzgerald offers a wide, but not comprehensive, survey of the animal kingdom to convey his rotten crowd: in all this verminous, predatory, bestial crowd there is not one airborne, flying creature. There are fish aplenty as well as the semi-aquatic rodent, Ernest Beaver and the tree dwelling Doctor Webster Civet , who despite his airy habitat “drowned last summer.” James B. (“Rot-Gut”) Ferret take his name from the domesticated earth-burrow dwelling carnivorous mammal. All three (beaver, civet, ferret) are noted for scent glands, genital or anal: in the wild, they pollute the air to mark territory; killed, they are used for perfume. The point is of course that Fitzgerald’s elemental imagery portrays Gatsby’s aspirations to transcend mortal bounds as an aspiration to fly. Daisy is associated with air, floating, fluttering, anchored like a balloon. Gatsby aspires to her airiness which lifts her among other things, ‘above the hot struggles of the poor.” (122) He is condemned, through Fitzgerald’s imagery to death by water: he is shot in a swimming pool, to be buried in “soggy ground” (142). The moment is foreshadowed at Nick’s tea-party reunion: Gatsby stands “in a puddle of water glaring tragically” (72). Fitzgerald’s rotten crowd is an earth-bound water-dwelling crowd and they drag Gatsby down to his watery death and earthy resting place. Their very names make the air he breathes stink.

This crowd perhaps constitutes the ‘funny fruits’ (103) of New York of a civilisation that has, in Spenglerian terms, (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of Civilization – the book Fitzgerald never recovered from when writing Gatsby) organically outgrown itself, lost touch with the nature that feeds it to produce the cities, and city folk, this ‘rotten crowd’ that are its fruit. And Fitzgerald’s judgement reveals Nick’s growth to moral understanding – he too will reject the wealth of the East, its money, machines and rottenness to nurture the reputation and aspirations of Jay Gatsby, seeking his flower, his Daisy Fay, who, in his imagination (according to Nick) represents the green breast of an earlier, rural America. For Nick, in Gatsby, found an incarnation of the Faustian legend (there was indeed a Faustina O’Brien –a diminutive and corrupt mini-Faust on that party-list (53)), of man’s desire to transcend the bounds of his mortality and the rottenness of his world.

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Rediscovered: the long-lost script that helped The Great Gatsby become a classic

F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel was a flop until a 1926 staging became a Broadway smash

It is the quintessential novel of the hedonistic jazz age, a roaring 20s story about the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. The Great Gatsby became an enduring classic , inspiring films and musicals, but received such mixed reviews in 1925 that its disappointed author, F Scott Fitzgerald, was all the more excited when it inspired a Broadway adaptation.

The 1926 dramatisation by Owen Davis, a Pulitzer prizewinner, opened to rave reviews and became a hit that contributed to the novel’s success, bringing Fitzgerald substantial royalties and fame.

But the original script had long since been lost. Now a copy has been rediscovered and will be published for the first time by Cambridge University Press – and it reveals that Davis took many liberties with Fitzgerald’s storyline.

Nick Carraway is no longer the narrator, new characters are invented, and Jay Gatsby’s past, which is revealed gradually throughout the novel, is presented all at once near the start. “Davis made some interesting changes,” said Anne Margaret Daniel, co-editor of the new publication. “He introduces some of the gangster characters who are in Gatsby’s underworld. He makes it very clear that Gatsby is in the business of organised crime, which is an apt reading of the book and, of course, it makes it more dramatic on stage.

“It’s a fascinating version of Gatsby. It absolutely captures the Jazz Age heat.”

The script had lain unnoticed for almost 100 years in a US archive. Daniel began searching for it after finding a fragment among Fitzgerald’s papers at Princeton University, along with unpublished production photographs. She eventually unearthed the complete script at Colorado State University, among papers from a study of Davis’s work that was never completed.

The script, which belonged to an actor in the Broadway staging, will be published for the first time on 25 April in the forthcoming book The Great Gatsby – The 1926 Broadway Script , edited by Daniel and James L W West III.

“It’s significant because this is the first time that The Great Gatsby was put on the Broadway stage, and thousands of people encountered the story for the first time,” said West.

“I would like to see it restaged – though The Great Gatsby is right now in the works as a Broadway musical and there’s also been an opera, a ballet and three movies at least.”

He added that, while Fitzgerald had been “protective” of the novel, he was excited by the staging, having seen an early draft and telling his agent in 1926 that it “put in my pocket seventeen or eighteen thousand without a stroke of work on my part”.

Fitzgerald had kept extensive material relating to Gatsby, and his archive at Princeton includes reviews of the novel and the Broadway production, sent to him by Max Perkins, his great editor at Scribner, and his agent, Harold Ober, as the writer was in Europe at the time.

Daniel said: “In his correspondence with Perkins, you can see that he was thrilled that it was being done. He was disappointed with the critical reception to Gatsby . He knew how good it was, but it got some stinky reviews. Some reviewers complained about the morality.”

In their introduction, she and West write that, if Fitzgerald had been allowed to attend rehearsals, “he would undoubtedly have been a pain in the neck”.

“In fact, anyone who reads the script today will probably react as Fitzgerald would have. The Great Gatsby has become a secular scripture, a verbal icon,” she said. “Many of us have read … the novel so often that we have it almost by heart. We should remember that, in 1926, The Great Gatsby was not yet a classic.”

• F Scott Fitzgerald
• The Observer
• The Great Gatsby

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It is not easy to create an essay about Gatsby, I confirm this, and I am going to share my experience with my readers. If you are required to make the great Gatsby essay, this guide will be helpful. I am a student, so I understand you well how you feel: you know about the assignment and cannot understand how to start. Yes, I was in your shoes and you should feel free to use my experience, and I hope that you will spend less time on your work than I did. I recommend reading the book by F. Scott Fitzgerald . Yes, you may say that you watched a movie but I assure you that it is different. It is great if you watched a famous movie about Gatsby with a great actor Leonardo DiCaprio but try to read the book! Believe me, it is a big difference between the book and movie as in the book, you can find much more details and descriptions that are skipped in the movie. Make sure you have received all detailed instructions from your teacher. I didn't think it is so important until I started to work on my essay and got some questions so I spent a lot of time trying to understand what to do. Eventually, I lost my hope, and I accidentally opened the requirements given by my teacher and found answers to all the questions I had. Funny, isn't it?  

How to Start the Great Gatsby Essay?

How to start an essay ? I guess this is the most popular question students have after they get this assignment and as I already mentioned before, your first step is to read the book. I suggest taking a pencil and paper and taking some notes during reading. It will help you to structurize everything better, plus you will be able to find some citations to use in your future essay much easier. At the beginning of your work, you have to make a good plan. Yes, like the most of the students, I hate planning, but they say it is the only way to fulfill the assignment within a deadline. So, count how many days you have, and make your own detailed plan of writing. Needless to say, every student may have their individual plan depending on their skills. It is my own plan:  

• Reading a book (with notes) - 2 days
• Choosing a good topic and brainstorming all my ideas - 1 day
• Writing my work (approximately 1000 word essay ) - 3 days
• Proofreading the finished paper - 1 day.

You can count easily - I spent around a week to create my own document. I spent more days because I lost a lot of time trying to find answers to questions that were just in my hands! It means you will need about 8-10 days to create a great work. I know some students practice writing their academic papers on the last night, and this is a very bad idea. All you can get is just a low grade.

Tips on Selecting the Great Gatsby Essay Topics

It is great when your teacher provides you with a list of interesting themes to write your great Gatsby essay. Sometimes, students have to choose their own topics. I appeared in the second situation, and I had to surf the Internet to find the great Gatsby essay topics. I found around 10 topics that turned my attention, and later selected one. Here is the list:

• Was Gatsby in love with Daisy or he was deeply in love only with an idea of her?
• In what ways Jay Gatsby is great. Does he deserve to be called great?
• Symbolism in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel “The Great Gatsby”.
• A movie based on the book The Great Gatsby.
• American dream essay in the novel The Great Gatsby.
• How the writer shows the contrast between poor and rich?
• The idea of the American Dream in Fitzgerald's novel.
• Who can be blamed for the death of Gatsby?
• The concept of happiness and wealth in The Great Gatsby.
• Does love mean something in The Great Gatsby?

Hints on Creating a Successful Paper Without a Headache

From my own experience, it is not so hard to structure your work properly; these are the main steps I took:

• I divided my work into three main paragraphs: the introduction, main part, and conclusion;
• I used essay transition words to tie together paragraphs of my paper;
• I wrote a detailed outline of the future document. At the start, it seemed to me just a waste of time, but it was helpful!
• When I have finished the paper, I proofread it thoroughly to find mistakes. If honestly, I am not strong in grammar, so I used Grammarly software to check and correct errors.

How to Find the Great Gatsby Essay Examples?

When you are going to write a paper, reading successful examples can help you to find your own ideas and thoughts on how to create your paper. I spent some time searching the great Gatsby essay examples on the Internet and I did find some good examples that turned my attention. It is a sample I want to share with my readers. F. Scott Fitzgerald in his novel, The Great Gatsby shows us the American dream from different perspectives. We meet Jay Gatsby - a man who follows his dream too hard and is unable to understand his life of riches is false. In the novel, the author shows to us how crazy the desire of power and wealth is, how Jay destroys himself. Jay Gatsby truly believes his money makes him great. The man believes he could get anything he wants with his money. Gatsby even tries to fix his failures from the past with it. Gatsby tries to “buy” the love of Daisy who is obsessed with wealth and power just like him. Gatsby attempts to get anything to satisfy his desires, but he can't find happiness in his money. Gatsby loses the sense of his life. This is true - if a human can't reach happiness, the whole life seems boring and empty. Jay Gatsby's fate eventually was destroyed by money and power he always wished for. This story shows us the Jazz Age period in the United States, and the author portrayed all events and characters with detail and elaboration. Nick Carraway who just moved to New York, becomes neighbors with mysterious and rich Jay Gatsby who grabs readers' attention from the beginning. With Daisy Buchanan character, Fitzgerald shows us people of that time were seeking the American dream. Daisy cheats her husband with rich Gatsby because she loves money and luxury things. This behavior evokes negative emotions in readers and gives a lot of food for thoughts if to try to compare modern Americans and their values with those described in the book. Fitzgerald defines the American dream as a strong desire for imperialism and individualism. Though this dream is distorted, it's like Jay's dream to be with Daisy who betrays her lovely husband just because of her desire for money, luxury, and splendor. With this novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald wanted to create something extraordinary but simple. The book grabs your attention from the beginning and keeps in tension until the end. We don't like Daisy, Gatsby or even Nick but we are deeply involved in the book because the author succeeds to grab readers' attention. He showed us people can be so much empty and lonely that they are unable to find their dream and they even push it away when they finally move to it. Such a short story, but it's full of dreams and desires. I truly hope my experience was helpful. Writing is hard work, and it is worth the result. Feel free to use my advice or delegate this essay to StudyCrumb  to get a high grade!  

Daniel Howard is an Essay Writing guru. He helps students create essays that will strike a chord with the readers.

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