The Great Gatsby
Book Info
- Title: The Great Gatsby
- Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Year: 1925
- Genre: Literary Fiction | Pages: 180 | Reading Time: 3-4 hours
The Story in Brief
Set in the summer of 1922 on Long Island, the story is narrated by Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate and World War I veteran who moves to West Egg to work as a bond salesman. He rents a small house next to the massive mansion of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire known for throwing lavish parties every weekend.
Nick’s cousin Daisy Buchanan lives across the bay in the more fashionable East Egg with her husband Tom, a wealthy but brutish former polo player. Tom is openly having an affair with Myrtle Wilson, whose husband George owns a shabby garage between West Egg and New York City.
Nick soon befriends Gatsby and discovers his neighbor’s incredible secret: everything Gatsby has done—the mansion, the parties, the wealth—has been to win back Daisy, whom he loved five years ago before going to war. At that time, Gatsby was poor and Daisy married Tom instead.
Nick arranges a reunion between Gatsby and Daisy, and they begin an affair. Gatsby believes he can recreate the past and convince Daisy to leave Tom. During a tense confrontation at the Plaza Hotel, Gatsby demands Daisy tell Tom she never loved him, but she can’t. Tom reveals that Gatsby made his fortune through bootlegging and other criminal activities.
On the drive back from New York, Daisy is driving Gatsby’s distinctive yellow car when she hits and kills Myrtle Wilson, who ran into the road. Gatsby takes the blame to protect Daisy. Tom tells George Wilson that Gatsby was driving. Grief-stricken and deceived, George shoots Gatsby in his pool and then kills himself.
Nick arranges Gatsby’s funeral, but almost no one attends—not the hundreds who partied at his house, and not Daisy, who has left town with Tom. Disgusted by the East Coast’s moral emptiness, Nick returns to the Midwest, reflecting on Gatsby’s tragic pursuit of an impossible dream.
Key Characters
- Jay Gatsby: Self-made millionaire obsessed with recreating the past and winning Daisy’s love; dies believing in his dream
- Nick Carraway: Narrator and moral center of the story; Gatsby’s neighbor and Daisy’s cousin who becomes disillusioned
- Daisy Buchanan: Nick’s cousin, Gatsby’s lost love; careless and ultimately choosing wealth and security over love
- Tom Buchanan: Daisy’s arrogant, racist, hypocritical husband; old money aristocrat with a cruel streak
- Jordan Baker: Professional golfer and Daisy’s friend; Nick’s romantic interest, cynical and dishonest
Main Themes
- The American Dream: The corruption and impossibility of the American Dream—success built on crime, the past irretrievable
- Class and Social Stratification: Old money vs. new money; the moral bankruptcy of the wealthy elite
- Time and the Past: The futility of trying to recapture or recreate the past; nostalgia as delusion
- Appearance vs. Reality: The glamorous surface hiding moral emptiness and decay beneath
Key Takeaways
The Great Gatsby exposes how the American Dream can become a destructive obsession when based on illusion rather than reality. Gatsby’s tragedy lies not just in his failure to win Daisy, but in his belief that enough money and willpower can reverse time and remake the world to match his romantic vision. The novel suggests that the wealthy elite are careless people who “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money,” leaving others to clean up their messes.
Why It Matters
Fitzgerald’s masterpiece remains America’s most celebrated literary critique of the Jazz Age and the American Dream itself. Published in 1925, just four years before the stock market crash, it prophetically captured the moral hollowness beneath the era’s glittering surface. The novel’s gorgeous prose, symbolic depth, and tragic inevitability have made it required reading for generations. It asks timeless questions about identity, ambition, love, and whether we can ever escape our pasts. The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock—Gatsby’s symbol of hope and yearning—has become one of literature’s most powerful metaphors for the elusive nature of our dreams.