The Great Gatsby

About This eBook

Overview

The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece and the quintessential novel of the Jazz Age. Narrated by Nick Carraway, it tells the tragic story of Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire whose elaborate Long Island parties are all in pursuit of one goal: winning back his lost love, Daisy Buchanan.

Plot Summary

In the summer of 1922, Nick Carraway moves to West Egg, Long Island, next door to a mysterious mansion where extravagant parties rage every weekend. The host is Jay Gatsby, a man shrouded in rumor and legend. Nick learns that Gatsby’s fortune, his mansion, and his parties all exist for a single purpose: to reunite with Daisy, Nick’s cousin, who lives across the bay with her brutish husband Tom Buchanan. When Gatsby and Daisy finally reconnect, their rekindled affair sets in motion a chain of events leading to tragedy, exposing the emptiness behind the glittering facade of wealth.

Themes & Significance

• The American Dream: Gatsby’s rise from poverty embodies the promise of self-invention, while his downfall reveals its corruption and impossibility.
• Wealth & Class: The divide between “old money” (East Egg) and “new money” (West Egg), and the carelessness of the privileged.
• Time & the Past: Gatsby’s fatal belief that he can repeat the past and recapture a lost moment.
• Illusion vs. Reality: The green light, Gatsby’s persona, and the American Dream itself as beautiful illusions masking emptiness.

Historical Context

Published in 1925, The Great Gatsby captures the excess and disillusionment of the Roaring Twenties—the era of Prohibition, jazz, flappers, and unprecedented wealth. Though initially a commercial disappointment, it gained recognition after Fitzgerald’s death and is now considered one of the greatest American novels ever written, a devastating critique of the American Dream.

Metadata

• Language: English
• Genre: Literary Fiction, Tragedy
• Setting: Long Island and New York City, summer 1922