The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald's literary themes and analysis

¶ … doubt F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote one of the most captivating novels about the American Dream and the decaying American mentality when he penned the Great Gatsby. Julie Evans points out how the author seems to have become a victim of this kind of mentality with his work and his life, dying a "broken alcoholic" (Evans). Nevertheless, Fitzgerald should be remembered not for how he died but what he wrote -- a masterpiece that looks too squarely at the moral bankruptcy of an entire generation.

The truth about life is that it is not all good or bad. Evans realizes that as wonderful as Fitzgerald's writing is, it is not perfect and it does not make his life perfect. She looks at Fitzgerald's life through a realistic lens in this article, noting his failures and accomplishments. She points out that Fitzgerald achieved fame early in his career but it was the kind of fame that elevated him "wrongly" (Evans) in Evans' opinion, as a prophet of a "decade in which America wanted only to be entertained" (Evans). This status prevented him achieving any "serious greatness" (Evans). This greatness is what Evans hopes to share with readers because the notion is worth consideration. Despite his problems and buried beneath the turmoil of his personal drama, there is significance. Evans writes her fear is that "those who do not feel the epiphanies of his prose, do not feel. This is one of the most human, and humanising, voices of the past hundred years" (Evans). Fitzgerald should not be haunted by the ghost of his past.

Instead of his past, Fitzgerald's greatness lies in his ability to articulate perfectly the mindset of his generation. Gatsby was great, too, in his own way and only Nick could see this. Nick was not blinded by the excess that groped at each and every soul of the roaring twenties. Nick was a fictional character able to resist but Fitzgerald was not. Evans writes if Fitzgerald ever was:

superficial, the honesty of his superficialities turned out to be a truer picture of the American Dream (and a truer prediction of the American century) than the mysticism and pose-ridden individualism of many of his contemporaries, and successors. It was Fitzgerald, too, who nailed the arbitrariness of its score sheet, nailed the obvious concomitance of success with rapid, violent disillusion. (Evans)

In this passage, Evans captures the truth about life in general. We are surrounded by those who think they are above everyone and then there are those who see the danger of life, warn about it through their art, yet swerve into it anyway. This is a hard and painful truth about life and it has nothing to do with talent. Most artists reveal themselves to broken in one way or another yet they shine as stars in their own right because talent cannot be dictated.