The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third novel and is also his most well known novel. It’s a snapshot of an era Fitzgerald coined as the “Jazz Age”, the brief window of the 1920’s between the end of World War I and the great stock market crash of 1929, and in this snapshot Fitzgerald reveals a society obsessed with material wealth while simultaneously devoid of basic morals and good character. The story, as recalled by Nick Carraway, revolves around several failed romances—both legitimate and extra-marital—but focuses mainly on the affair..

The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third novel and is also his most well known one. It’s a snapshot of an era Fitzgerald coined as the “Jazz Age”, the brief window of the 1920’s between the end of World War I and the great stock market crash of 1929, and in this snapshot Fitzgerald reveals a society obsessed with material wealth while simultaneously devoid of basic morals and good character. The story, as recalled by Nick Carraway, revolves around several failed romances—both legitimate and extra-marital—but focuses mainly on the affair between the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Long Island socialite Daisy Buchanan. She is a beautiful woman descending from the American aristocracy and living in a house just across the river separating the two towns, and she is the object of Jay Gatsby’s desire.

The reader is not privileged as to where Gatsby acquires his wealth until the end of the novel but it is immediately clear that he is famous in New York’s high-society because of the lavish, and often wild, parties that he throws at his mansion in West Egg, New York. The fact that Gatsby lives in West Egg rather than East Egg is important because geography plays a major role in the symbolism Fitzgerald incorporates into his story. East Egg is the town where all the old money lives, while West Egg is the town where all the gaudy new money lives. When Carraway, who lives nextdoor to Gatsby, describes West Egg he explains that it’s “the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them”.

Fitzgerald’s symbolic use of location is not limited to just East and West Egg, rather; he uses other locations to symbolize how he views different aspects of American society. The Great Gatsby excels at both revealing and contrasting the many contradictions that Fitzgerald sees in American culture during the Jazz Age. For instance, New York City is meant to represent wildness and the pursuit of pleasure and material wealth. Likewise, the West is meant to represent the morals and strength of character that Fitzgerald is mourning. It remains pure in contrast to the East Coast that is already corrupted by greed and materialism. Also, there are the industrial wastelands, which Carraway refers to as the valley of ashes, that the characters must pass through in order to get back and forth between Long Island and New York City. This filthy place represents the moral decay American society is subjected to as a result of the wealth generated by its ever expanding economy and the means that the average American individual is willing to go in order to acquire a great deal of wealth in a short amount of time.

The Jazz Age is, after all, made up by thousands of men returning from Europe changed after serving in the first World War, the likes of which the world had never seen, to the potential of gaining unbelievable wealth and prosperity in America’s burgeoning new economy, the likes of which also the world had never seen. Fitzgerald famously captures this overwhelming transition from the destruction of war to the growth and potential of rampant capitalism when Nick describes himself as “simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life”.

The different locations in The Great Gatsby are the most obvious of Fitzgerald’s symbols, however; there are other more subtle symbols. The weather plays a conspicuous role in the story as well because it tends to reflect the emotions of the characters present. For instance, when Daisy and Gatsby initially rekindle their love for one another the sun emerges from the clouds ending the dreary rainstorm that had preceded their date. This is just one example of the many times that Fitzgerald uses the weather as an aid to convey a scene’s temperament and to reinforce the emotions of his characters. Also, the green light at the end of the Buchanan’s dock and the ominous eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg on a massive billboard in the valley of ashes both serve their symbolic functions as well. The novel is distinctly self-conscious of symbols and how arbitrary the meanings that are imputed on them tend to be. On the one hand, Fitzgerald’s billboard obviously represents the eyes of God “brooding over the solemn dumping ground” of the valley of ashes, but Fitzgerald also leaves the interpretation of the eyes open to other characters and the reader himself. This is a reflection of the importance and significance of symbols in American society as well as the malleable values that are imposed upon them.

Jay Gatsby is the perfect example of how powerful and important symbols can be in American culture. He constructs an entirely new identity for himself supported solely by the symbols of wealth and prosperity that he surrounds himself with. In a sense, even Gatsby becomes a symbol of the inevitable self-destruction and ruin that results from an unbridled pursuit of pleasure and wealth. Everything—from his enormous mansion, to his fancy clothes and wild parties—is meant to symbolize his wealth and the legitimacy of his social standing to the rest of New York’s elite society. Gatsby is not the only character that serves as an archetype symbol in the novel, though; Meyer Wolfsheim represents corruption and immorality, and even the story’s narrator represents the naiveté and gullibility of those that are still young and relatively free from the corruption ravaging American society.

Since its initial publication The Great Gatsby has been hailed as a hallmark of American Literature and for good reason. It is, in many respects, a flawless novel from start to finish. Somehow, much to both the admiration and frustration of many aspiring writers, Fitzgerald is able to incorporate an incredible amount of literary symbolism throughout The Great Gatsby in a way that enhances an already rich narrative rather than holding it back. The Great Gatsby is certainly a book that one can sit down and read for the pleasure of a great novel, but what really makes it such a great novel is the complexity of its literary form and symbolism, and the fact that one can read it over and over again and discover something new within it every time.