The Great Gastby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1896. He was a student of St. Paul Acadamy, the Newman School, and had attended Princeton for a short while. In 1917 he joined the army and was posted in Montgomery, Alabama. This is where he would meet his future wife Zelda Sayre but first he had to make some money to impress her. Having his first novel, This Side of Paradise published and a bestseller accomplished this. He was published at the age of only twenty-three and was regarded as the speaker for the Jazz Age. Pretty soon though things started to take a turn for the worse. Zelda's schizophrenia and Fitzgerald's drinking problem led Fitzgerald to rely mostly on his short story's for income. Slowly they started to lose their appeal as well. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald ended up dying in Hollywood on December 21, 1940.

About the 1920's

Just so you understand what it was like when Fitzgerald wrote this novel I'm going to give a brief description of what it was like in the 1920's. They were known as the Roaring Twenty's because the economy at the time was through the roof and people were partying all over the place. At the time there was a legal ban on the manufacture and sale of intoxicating drink called prohibition. Since a lot of people didn't feel like drinking the gin they made in their bathtubs all the time there was a huge market for organized crime. Organized criminals catered to the needs of the drinking public by illegaly supplying them with liquor and made a fortune doing it. Even with all the crime in the Jazz Age though, it will still be remembered for its glittering lights and unbridled romance.

Character Descriptions:

Nick Carraway:

Nick Carraway is the narrator of this story. As you can see on the first page Nick holds himself in higher esteem than the other characters in the novel. Even though Nick is the narrator he should not be completely trusted. On the first page he boasts about how he doesn't judge people yet throughout the story he's judging people. The only person who he envies though is Gatsby. On [page 2] Nick says about Gatsby, He has an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. Also, for someone with such high moral values he doesn't handle commitment very well. That's probably a main reason why he left the Mid West and it's part of why he ended up going back. Nick left the Mid West to be a stock broker in New York but didn't get rich, yet everywhere he looks these amoral people are rolling in the wealth. That's a clue to one of the main themes....

Jay Gatsby:

Gatsby is the rich, majestic, protagonist of the novel. While it isn't clear how he made all his money it is obvious that it was through illegal dealings in organized crime. There was a reference to the 1919 World Series, (That's the one where the players on the Chicago White Sox helped out organized crime by not trying their hardest when it counted). It is also clear that the driving motivation for getting all this cash is so that it will appeal to Daisy. Daisy was the rich girl that he fell in love with before he joined