Who is The Great Gatsby? Analysis of the work “The Great Gatsby” (Francis Scott Fitzgerald) The collapse of the American dream.

Francis Fitzgerald is a famous American writer. Virtually all of the author’s works are written about the “jazz era.” The writer himself coined this term; it means the happy decade in the life of America between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Great Depression, when the younger generation rebelled against traditional culture. It was replaced by frantic and temperamental black music, which was given the name “jazz”. It was about her that he wrote the legendary novel The Great Gatsby.

The author began writing The Great Gatsby in 1925 in France. Before the novel was published short story"Winter Dreams" According to the author, it is like a sketch of a future book. The writer worked painstakingly on this work, changing and finalizing chapters. Initially, the narration of the story came from Gatsby himself, but then the writer changed the narrator, since the image of Gatsby was somehow vague and incomprehensible. Fitzgerald liked the cover of the first edition so much that he even introduced an element of the cover into the work (the big eyes on the Slag Valley promotional poster).

In his novel, Fitzgerald reflected the case of the major New York broker Fuller-McGee. He declared bankruptcy while his company was illegally using its auctioneers' money. The writer lived in the villa next door to Fuller, which may explain his interest in this case, which was actively discussed by all New York newspapers. There are certainly some similarities between Fuller and Gatsby.

The title of the book also has its own special history. Its author changed about 6 times. It is believed that Fitzgerald called Gatsby “great” in order to show her irony regarding the fate of this hero.

Genre, direction

The work is written in the “novel” genre. The author in this work is characterized by the direction of realism. Some critics call his novel a chronicle of jazz. Fitzgerald was able to accurately convey life at that time. Adding music, colors, mixing secrets and omissions, sprinkling it all with deep feeling and slight despair, Francis Fitzgerald is preparing a truly magnificent masterpiece. He leads us through the labyrinth life path Gatsby, intertwining him with the destinies of other people. And only towards the middle of the novel the writer reveals to us the real reason all the actions of the main character.

Not in this story pure love, as, for example, in 19th century novels. This work is like a hammer to readers' rose-colored glasses. The author subtly and clearly depicts the world as it is when people behave selfishly.

The essence

The author himself said that the main idea of the work is to show the injustice of the fate of a poor young man who cannot marry the girl he dreams of. Fitzgerald claimed that a similar topic constantly swirls in his head, since he himself was in this position.

Once upon a time, a young, unknown, ambitious young man dared to ask for the hand of the daughter of a large businessman and the owner of a decent fortune. Of course, the girl herself refused with a laugh, because she moved in social circles where it was vital to be rich. But she abandoned the mocking hope: the groom had to earn a million, and then she could become his wife. And then Fitzgerald began to write. His works were not successful at first, but one novel turned his fate around: popularity brought him wealth. Zelda, Scott's lover, had to give in, but she herself already wanted it. Her acquaintance became a celebrity and was admitted to the best houses of the sophisticated bourgeoisie. So, the writer achieved his goal, but always remembered at what cost.

The main characters and their characteristics

The main character is Nick Carraway. It is on his behalf that the story is told. It is through him that we learn at first glance the confusing, but in fact simple story Gatsby's life. In fact, it is impossible to say anything specific about this character. In the books, he is our guide along the road of Gatsby's destiny. He encounters other heroes who tell us more and more details about the “Great One”. We know a little about his family, we know enough about his feelings for Jordan Baker and his feelings for Jay Gatsby himself. Our narrator is not devoid of wisdom and a subtle understanding of reality. He is a modest and active person.
Jay Gatsby– an enterprising and successful man, he is approximately 30 years old (like Nick). For our narrator, as for other guests, he was a man whose past and present are shrouded in secrecy. All his wealth was in full view of everyone, but his soul and his whole essence were hidden from human eyes. His main feature is determination. All his life he loved one person, was devoted only to him, and everything he did was in order to win his favor.
Daisy (Daisy) Buchanan is Nick's second cousin and is about 23 years old. From a rich family. She is the kind of person who needs someone to guide her through life. Her husband became such a person for her. Daisy was a smart girl. In her youth she loved Gatsby very much, but when he left, she began dating Thomas. She didn't love him, but her parents approved of the marriage and disapproved of her relationship with Gatsby. Even at the end of the book, she still stays with her husband because he is more reliable to her than Gatsby. She had already gotten used to living with him.
Thomas "Tom" Buchanan- a very unpleasant guy. Good-natured in appearance, but in fact a very slippery person. He treats his wife with disrespect. He cheats without hiding it. For him, women are only creatures who must give birth and raise children. Does whatever he wants. A dangerous and cunning hero.

Topics and issues

This work covers many topics, but the main theme is, of course, unequal position of people in society. Jay Gatsby and Daisy loved each other. She was the daughter of a wealthy man, he was a poor guy. They couldn't be together. Everything was against it. The author talks about the problem of reprehensible attitudes between rich and poor. A person measures those around him by the size of his wallet, which leads to mistakes that are costly to a society that lives by false values.
An equally important issue raised here is life in illusions. Jay Gatsby, having parted with Daisy, did not stop thinking that someday he would come to her, he would have a fortune behind him, and she, realizing that he still loved her, would return to him. But this is an illusion and nothing more. An unfinished goal that grew into a strong desire to prove to her that he was worthy of her hand. On the one hand, this is very good. Gatsby succeeded and became rich. On the other hand, he never built his life; in his soul he still remained someone whom society considered an outcast and a poor man. He lived only for his beloved, and, in the end, having come to her, he forgot that time changes people.
Also rises theme of friendship and family. Gatsby hid and didn’t really tell anything about himself, but, as it turns out in the end, he had a loving father who knew his whole story inside and out. He had Nick, who treated him with respect, while the “great” one was rejected by everyone and everything. But even these real ties cannot help a person realize his own importance and need. He is chasing phantom feelings that let him down, because they have been gone for a long time. Unfortunately, we can rarely correctly assess the importance of those devoted and unnoticed people who are next to us, wherever we are.
Also in focus is the problem of habit and fear of giving it up. Daisy is a slave to her cowardice and routine. She is afraid to break off an unnecessary connection for the sake of real feeling. For the sake of a comfort zone, a woman renounces happiness and betrays her dream.

Meaning

The idea of the work is that life is not a fairy tale, but a tragedy, even if music sounds around you and the fishy splash of palms is heard. You may face a huge number of trials and, unfortunately, this does not mean that in the end you will be lucky and everything will suddenly become justified. Jay Gatsby lived a hard life, he was a little secretive, but he kept love and hope in his heart that sooner or later he would be happy with Daisy. But, as we can see, everything is different. She was afraid to leave her husband and child for the sake of an old love. Gatsby dies completely alone. Daisy didn't even come to his funeral. This means that even when it seems to you that you deserve happiness after going through many difficulties, this does not at all mean that some ephemeral force like justice should bring a reward in its teeth. Luck is also capricious and unpredictable like love: the heroine chose a vicious and rude man, not a devoted and loving one.

The author also wanted to show the personal life of his country, how close relationships between people develop in the era of rampant capitalism. Through the drama of the main character, we see how a person becomes just a producer of material values and the owner of all sorts of benefits. He is valued in monetary terms, so he is forced to pursue financial solvency without sparing himself. This is how his time passes. This is how Gatsby missed his happiness, thinking that he would still have time to earn money and appear as a king, but, alas, the flow of life is indifferent to people and their efforts. Success came to the man, but it did not help him turn back time.

Criticism

Roman received good reviews in printed editions, but, nevertheless, the book did not sell out as quickly as the writer would have liked. Critics of the time were also not particularly willing to speak at all about his work.

They responded positively to the novel famous writer Ernest Hemingway and Edith Wharton, who wrote more than 20 novels in her lifetime. Only since 1945 has Francis Fitzgerald's popularity increased. During the writer’s lifetime, reviewers were very biased towards his work and only after his death changed their point of view.

There is still no consensus on the importance, personality, or even genius of his novel. Each of the critics perceives and evaluates The Great Gatsby in their own way.

"The Great Gatsby" is the name of the novel American writer Fitzgerald. The book is actually very popular among readers - and has always been popular. So why? I really want to figure this out. This novel was published on April 10, 1925, in what is commonly called the “Age of Jazz.”

“The Great Gatsby” is in some ways a sentimental love story, in some ways a detective story, and the ending in the novel is tragic. Quite interesting, sometimes strange images of that era constantly flash on the pages of the novel, immersing the reader in that time. Very stormy, but at the same time unforgettable. There was not much time left before the “Great Depression” in the United States, when rich young people simply shot themselves because they found themselves bankrupt.

But in the 1920s, the US economy grew rapidly because the US is the only country in the world that did not suffer from either the consequences of the First World War or the consequences of the Second World War. For some reason, Russia always suffered the most, then the USSR. Many biographers of Fitzgerald write that his wife, the prototype of the heroine of the novel Tender is the Night, fell ill with a severe form of mental illness during this period. The writer himself was endlessly worried about this, and he himself often went to the hospital with tuberculosis.

It is worth keeping in mind that Fitzgerald also had internal contradictions, because at one time he really wanted to go to the front of the First World War to defend democracy, but did not get there. Disappointment in life and the illness of his wife gave the novel a tragic overtone. It is worth noting that the word “jazz” has nothing to do with the cheerful (more often than not) musical direction of that period. In the understanding of Fitzgerald's biographers, "jazz" means some kind of philosophical depth, some kind of nervous tension reigning in the atmosphere of that time, even to the point of tragedy, some kind of premonition of impending discord. Fitzgerald himself emphasized this: “When they talk about jazz, they mean, first of all, the situation in big cities, when the front line is approaching them... and therefore, let’s live while we’re alive, have fun, and tomorrow death will come for us.” In the article "Echoes of the Jazz Age", Fitzgerald wrote: "The events of 1919 made us more likely to be cynics than revolutionaries... it was characteristic of the Jazz Age that we were not at all interested in politics."

The novel begins with the story of Nick Carraway, who is advised by his father not to judge other people poorly unless they have the same character traits or material advantages as him. “If you want to judge someone, remember that they do not have the same advantages as you” - Fitzgerald. So, Jay Gatsby... he's quite rich. But not as rich as Jay would like.

The image of Jay may have been influenced by Hemingway’s story “The Young Rich Man,” which, naturally, Fitzgerald read. But even without this, he acquired some kind of fame among readers. It is worth noting that a “very rich man” is a socio-psychological type, influencing an entire, and perhaps more than one, generation. But why can people who may have never encountered them in life be interested in very rich people?

Probably, Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby” cannot be called satirical or in any way accusatory - otherwise the writer would have brought to the reader’s attention some real or fictitious “vices” of the society in which he was so interested. But, it is likely that Fitzgerald became interested in precisely this layer of people who were far from art, because, most likely, he internally foresaw their collapse in 1929.

Perhaps this will excuse the writer, who, being a creative person himself, brought to the stage not an artist, nor a writer, nor an artist, but simply a “very rich man.” By the way, perhaps Fitzgerald somehow wanted to prevent a collapse - he wanted society to take a closer look at the experience of the USSR, and to change the situation in the economy in a peaceful, non-revolutionary way. Nick begins his story with memories, not only of himself, but also of his family. But he adds: “Gatsby justified himself in the end. It was not he, but what was weighing on him - that poisonous dust that rose around his dream - that’s what made me temporarily lose interest in people’s fleeting sorrows and rushed joys.”

Nick graduated from Yale University in 1915, got a dog, and settled in West Egg. Opposite, as you know, Gatsby's estate was located. His relatives, husband and wife Tom and Daisy Buchanan, returned to America from France. Young people - Tom, Daisy, Daisy's friend and Nick meet in an informal setting, and Tom, in response to Daisy's question “who is Gatsby,” wanted to introduce him to her as his closest neighbor. The mysterious Gatsby continued to worry Nick for some reason. The incident when he saw Gatsby on the balcony at night alarmed him, but he immediately forgot about it. But between Nick and Gatsby himself, friendly relations subsequently developed when they both realized that they were once comrades in the regiment. Gatsby decides to reveal to Nick the secret of his inner and outer world as much as possible.

Gatsby invites Nick to his villa. “At the beginning of the eighth, I, dressed in a white flannel suit, entered Gatsby’s villa, but felt uncomfortable among many strangers,” Nick described the beginning of the evening. One of Nick's acquaintances meets Jordan Baker at the evening and spends a lot of time with her. The mystery of Gatsby and what he surrounded himself with - pop singers, dancers, emigrants from Russia - all this spurred the interest of Jordan and Nika in him, who really liked each other that evening.

Gatsby's mansion was full of events every day - many guests, magnificent dinners, new women, all this attracted attention to him and created the effect of mystery. But an alarming note began to creep into some of the remarks of visitors to the mansion. “He’s a bootlegger,” the ladies whispered, drinking his cocktails and smelling his flowers.” It must be said that a bootlegger is “an underground liquor dealer during Prohibition in the United States in the 1920s.” But in a broad sense, these people traded in everything from music records, to flowers, or perhaps even cars. The origin of Gatsby's fortune and his motives for the society that loved to visit him remained unclear.

It is probably worth noting that the main characters of the novel are 30 years old at the time of the story. All relationships unfold between young people of their time. And, probably, the main circumstance in the novel is the mysterious romance between Daisy and Gatsby himself. It turned out that they already had a relationship long before meeting at Gatsby's mansion. Perhaps his love for Daisy partly explained all of Gatsby's actions. Gatsby probably tried to take Daisy away from Tom, but the tragic incident - when the lovers, leaving the Plaza Hotel, knocked a woman to death on the road, prevented Gatsby's dreams from coming true. Probably either a tragic accident or a fatal mistake - the husband of the deceased kills Gatsby at the end by the pool. And the fact that the main characters who knew Gatsby go in different directions is an indicator of the impossibility of their relationship in the future.

Gatsby seemed to me not so much as indecisive, but rather really mysterious, and loving to boast a little. There is a hint of this in the book in the scene in which he shows Nick the order “from little Montenegro,” although, quite likely, the award received at the front of the First World War then constituted all his personal happiness for the young man. In my opinion, this is a story about the impossible - that Gatsby and Daisy would never have been together, and that Nick and Jordan would ultimately be disappointed in their relationship. Tom and Daisy were still irresponsible people. As the author characterizes them, “careless.” If Daisy had loved Gatsby, she would have married him when he was poor.

But time has passed. Gatsby, on the basis of his fame, may have traded somewhere and made a fortune for himself, and created some kind of mysterious legend about himself, managed to attract society, and Daisy ran after him only because he is not only rich, but also has some kind of glory. Then she no longer needed Tom. By the way, we are not talking about relationships with age differences here. Here we are talking about relationships of exactly the same age - people who are 30. Moreover, everyone. Probably one word characterizes Daisy: “irresponsibility.” Even in relation to her daughter, whom she most likely did not care about. But it must be said that the relationship between Nick and Jordan also could not stand the pressure of events and began to crack. Probably, the greatness and motive of Gatsby’s actions is that in some way he tried to attract the attention of his beloved, Daisy. But, apparently, the young man did not know any other way to conquer a woman’s heart, such as fictitious or real wealth. In fact, this is the main tragedy of Gatsby. And, perhaps, young people in many ways - trying to conquer a woman, they display all their wealth in front of her (somewhat reminiscent of the image of Zlatogor from the opera “The Queen of Spades” by Tchaikovsky). But this is not always a fact. Probably, if Gatsby knew how to attract Daisy’s attention, he would have fought her off from Tom even then. But this is basically sad.

But, quite likely, events would have developed differently if not for a fatal accident - Myrtle’s death in an accident due to Gatsby’s fault. Perhaps Fitzgerald wanted to emphasize the aimlessness of the existence of the generation of thirty-year-olds. For them, life meant fun, but until the moment when a fatal coincidence of circumstances did not force them to think about the human values that they should carry within themselves.

Text: Olga Sysueva

Still from the film “The Great Gatsby” (2013)

“If you measure a personality by its ability to express itself, then there was something truly magnificent in Gatsby, some kind of heightened sensitivity to all the promises of life... It was a rare gift of hope, a romantic fervor that I have never seen in anyone else.”

Nick Carraway belongs to a respectable, wealthy family in one of the small towns of the Midwest. He graduated from Yale in 1915, then fought in Europe; Having returned to his hometown after the war, he “could not find a place for himself” and in 1922 he moved east to New York to study credit business. He settled in the suburbs: on the outskirts of Long Island Sound, two completely identical capes jut into the water, separated by a narrow cove: East Egg and West Egg; in West Egg, between two luxurious villas, nestled a house that he rented for eighty dollars a month. His second cousin Daisy lives in more fashionable East Egg. She is married to Tom Buchanan. Tom is fabulously rich, he studied at Yale at the same time as Nick, and even then Nick was very unsympathetic to his aggressively flawed behavior. Tom started cheating on his wife on their honeymoon; and now he does not consider it necessary to hide from Nick his connection with Myrtle Wilson, the wife of the owner of a gas station and car repair, which is located halfway between West Egg and New York, where the highway runs almost right up to railway and runs next to her for a quarter of a mile. Daisy also knows about her husband’s infidelities, it torments her; From his first visit to them, Nick was left with the impression that Daisy needed to run away from this house immediately.

On summer evenings there is music at neighbor Nick's villa; on weekends, his Rolls-Royce turns into a shuttle bus to New York, transporting huge numbers of guests, and a multi-passenger Ford shuttles between the villa and the station. On Mondays, eight servants and a specially hired second gardener spend the day removing signs of destruction.

Soon Nick receives an official invitation to Mr. Gatsby's party and turns out to be one of the very few invited: they didn't expect an invitation, they just came there. No one in the crowd of guests knows the owner closely; not everyone knows him by sight. His mysterious, romantic figure arouses keen interest - and speculation multiplies in the crowd: some claim that Gatsby killed a man, others that he is a bootlegger, von Hindenburg's nephew and second cousin of the devil, and during the war he was a German spy. It is also said that he studied at Oxford. In the crowd of his guests he is lonely, sober and reserved. The society that enjoyed Gatsby's hospitality paid him by not knowing anything about him. Nick meets Gatsby almost by accident: after talking with some man - they turned out to be fellow soldiers - he noticed that he was somewhat embarrassed by the position of a guest unfamiliar with the owner, and received the answer: “So it’s me - Gatsby.”

After several meetings, Gatsby asks Nick for a favor. Embarrassed, he walks around for a long time, presenting a medal from Montenegro, which he was awarded in the war, and his Oxford photograph as proof of his respectability; Finally, in a very childish way, he says that Jordan Baker will present his request - Nick met her at Gatsby’s, and met her at the house of his sister Daisy: Jordan was her friend. The request was simple - to invite Daisy to tea one day so that, supposedly by chance, as a neighbor, Gatsby could see her, Jordan said that in the fall of 1917 in Louisville, her and Daisy’s hometown, Daisy and Gatsby , then a young lieutenant, loved each other, but were forced to part; he was sent to Europe, and a year and a half later she married Tom Buchanan. But before the wedding dinner, having thrown into the trash the groom's gift - a pearl necklace worth three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Daisy got drunk like a cobbler, and, clutching a letter in one hand and a bottle of Sauternes in the other, begged her friend to refuse on her behalf to the groom. However, they put her in a cold bath, gave her ammonia to smell, put a necklace around her neck, and she “got married like a darling.”

The meeting took place; Daisy saw his house (this was very important for Gatsby); the festivities at the villa stopped, and Gatsby replaced all the servants with others “who know how to remain silent,” because Daisy began to visit him often. Gatsby also met Tom, who showed an active rejection of him, his house, his guests and became interested in the source of his income, which was probably dubious.

One day, after lunch at Tom and Daisy's, Nick, Jordan and Gatsby and their owners go to have fun in New York. Everyone understands that Tom and Gatsby entered into a decisive battle for Daisy. At the same time, Tom, Nick and Jordan are driving in Gatsby’s cream-colored Rolls-Royce, and he and Daisy are in Tom’s dark blue Ford. Halfway there, Tom stops by to get gas at Wilson's - he announces that he intends to leave forever and take his wife away: he suspected something was wrong, but does not connect her betrayal with Tom. Tom becomes frantic when he realizes that he could lose both his wife and his mistress at the same time. In New York, the explanation took place: Gatsby tells Tom that Daisy does not love him and never loved him, he was just poor and she was tired of waiting; in response to this, Tom exposes the source of his income, which is truly illegal: bootlegging on a very large scale. Daisy is shocked; she is inclined to stay with Tom. Realizing that he has won, on the way back Tom tells his wife to go in the cream car with Gatsby; the others follow her in a lagging dark blue Ford. Arriving at a gas station, they see a crowd and the body of Myrtle who was hit. From the window she saw Tom with Jordan, whom she took for Daisy, in a large cream car, but her husband locked it and she could not come; when the car returned, Myrtle, freed from the lock, rushed towards it. Everything happened very quickly, there were practically no witnesses, the car didn’t even slow down. From Gatsby, Nick learned that Daisy was driving.

Until the morning, Gatsby stayed under her windows so that he would be nearby if she suddenly needed her. Nick looked out the window - Tom and Daisy were sitting together, like something united - spouses or, perhaps, accomplices; but he did not have the courage to take away Gatsby’s last hope.

Only at four in the morning did Nick hear a taxi drive up with Gatsby. Nick didn't want to leave him alone, and since that morning Gatsby wanted to talk about Daisy, and only about Daisy, it was then that Nick found out strange story his youth and his love.

James Getz was his real name. He changed it at the age of seventeen, when he saw Dan Cody's yacht and warned Dan about the beginning of a storm. His parents were simple farmers - in his dreams he never recognized them as his parents. He invented Jay Gatsby for himself in full accordance with the tastes and concepts of a seventeen-year-old boy and remained faithful to this invention until the very end. He recognized women early and, spoiled by them, learned to despise them. Confusion constantly reigned in his soul; he believed in the unreality of the real, in the fact that the world rests firmly and reliably on the wings of a fairy. When he stood up on the oars and looked up at the white hull of Cody's yacht, it seemed to him that it embodied everything beautiful and amazing that there is in the world. Dan Cody, a millionaire who made his fortune in Nevada silver mines and Montana oil operations, took him on a yacht - first as a steward, then he became chief mate, captain, secretary; for five years they sailed around the continent; then Dan died. Of the twenty-five thousand dollar inheritance that Dan left him, he did not receive a single cent, without ever understanding due to what legal intricacies. And he was left with what the peculiar experience of these five years had given him: Jay Gatsby’s abstract scheme took on flesh and blood and became a man. Daisy was the first "society girl" on his path. From the first time she seemed dizzyingly desirable to him. He began to visit her house - first in the company of other officers, then alone. He had never seen such a beautiful house, but he well understood that he did not come to this house by right. The military uniform that served him as an invisibility cloak could fall off his shoulders at any moment, and underneath it he was just a young man without family or tribe and without a penny in his pocket. And so he tried not to waste time. He probably expected to take what he could and leave, but it turned out that he doomed himself to eternal service to the shrine. She disappeared into her rich home, into her rich life filled to the brim, and he was left with nothing - except for the strange feeling that they were now husband and wife. With stunning clarity, Gatsby comprehended the secret of youth in captivity and under the protection of wealth...

His military career was successful: at the end of the war he was already a major. He was eager to go home, but due to a misunderstanding he ended up in Oxford - anyone from the armies of the victorious countries could take a course for free at any university in Europe. Daisy's letters showed nervousness and melancholy; she was young; she wanted to arrange her life now, today; she needed to make a decision, and for it to come, some kind of force was required - love, money, undeniable benefit; Tom arose. Gatsby received the letter while still at Oxford.

Saying goodbye to Gatsby that morning, Nick, already walking away, shouted: “Nothing on nothing, that’s what they are! You alone are worth them all combined!” How glad he was later that he had said these words!

Not hoping for justice, the distraught Wilson came to Tom, found out from him who owned the car, and killed Gatsby, and then himself.

Three people attended the funeral: Nick, Mr. Getz - Gatsby's father, and only one of the many guests, although Nick called all the regulars at Gatsby's parties. When he called Daisy, he was told that she and Tom had left and had not left an address.

They were careless creatures, Tom and Daisy, they broke things and people, and then ran away and hid behind their money, their all-consuming carelessness, or whatever else their union was based on, leaving others to clean up after them.

The novel "The Great Gatsby", written in the spring of 1925, is truly great. It did not bring fame to its author Francis during his lifetime.

Only thirty years later, in the 60s of the last century, came the recognition of the classic: according to school curriculum The United States needs to know a summary of The Great Gatsby. This is a “very American” book: Why did he “succeed”? Firstly, some of Gatsby’s traits are characteristic of Francis Scott himself: earned wealth, dreams, flights of thought towards his dissolute, later beautiful wife Zelda Sayre, which led the writer to a stroke and death. Secondly, the author wrote about his generation in the same way as Pasternak, Sholokhov, as Pelevin writes now.

To truly gain an understanding of The Great Gatsby, a summary will not help much. Open the end of the novel - here is its leitmotif. In one of the last paragraphs, Fitzgerald mentions a romantic 17th-century sailing ship rushing from the distant shores of Europe to the coast of Long Island (later the site of Gatsby’s residence), the shining eyes of a Dutch sailor, “breathlessness” from the beauty of the surroundings and “the ability to admire.” It was just such a person, as if torn out by a time machine from that same Dutch sailing ship, that Scott Fitzgerald “threw” back to the 20s of the last century. Isn’t it related to this leitmotif that 17-year-old James Getz, impressed by millionaire Dan Cody’s yacht, came up with a new name for himself, Jay Gatsby? He remains faithful to the end to the name born of youthful fantasy.

Once you discover the book, you will understand why the Great Gatsby is considered a household name in the United States. Summary books - the story of Lieutenant Gatsby's acquaintance with the rich girl Daisy, Nick Carraway's second cousin, and his feelings for her. He went to the front, she married millionaire Tom Buchanan. Even the fact that young Daisy, on the eve of the wedding, threw away her future husband's gift - fifty thousand - and got drunk "in the smoke" did not turn the wedding away. However, two principles have always struggled in her: the understanding of benefits and the desire for happiness. But if the girl was protected by wealth, then the Great Gatsby was in the warring army. A brief summary of his subsequent biography: the rank of major, being scorched by the fire of the First World War, studying at Oxford. The young man understood that his beloved belonged to a different class, filled to the brim with luxury and life, so he strove to become rich by any means, even through the underground trade in alcohol, violating the “prohibition law” (bootlegging).

But all this happens behind the scenes. The novel shows him having already purchased a residence in a resort suburb of New York, not far from the Buchanan mansion. The Great Gatsby chose the anonymous tactic of entering the world and making contact with Daisy. The summary is this: after organizing endless noisy parties one after another, he eventually wanted to invite Desi too. His plan was a success, she responded to his call, and was even ready to dissolve her marriage. But Tom Buchanan, the husband, took Gatsby's naive explanation at the Plaza Hotel that Daisy would leave him as a signal to action. He found out about the illegality of the income of the main character of the novel and told his wife about it. She chose to live with her husband, even knowing about his betrayal with his mistress. The Great Gatsby paid severely for trying to “break into high society.” The summary subsequently acquires the features of fatality and tragedy. Tom Buchanan came across an opportunity that he did not miss: Daisy, while driving Jay’s car, killed Myrtle, George Wilson’s wife, then, scared, drove away. When the inconsolable husband came to him asking questions, Buchanan pointed to Jay. George Wilson shot and killed The Great Gatsby while he was relaxing at his residence and then committed suicide.

What did Fitzgerald want to say to his fellow countrymen with this novel? He probably tried to “shake up” the negative balance between dreams, admiration, passion and commercialism, pragmatism.