Great Gatsby the Famous Novel

Great Gatsby

The famous novel The Great Gatsby -- which critics' claim stands above all others as the "great American novel" -- is set in the "Roaring Twenties" in New York City. The author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, used this particular setting and the cultural era in the early 1920s to his great benefit. The characters he used and developed, all their expensive parties and their glamorous styles of living gives readers an understanding of the how some high-brow Americans behaved during those years.

The Great Gatsby

There are several important literary techniques that Fitzgerald used in this novel that bring it the critical praise it has received over the years. First of all, the writing is brilliant, and this book is a fairly true description of what the New York high society was at the time. Secondly, there is a lot of symbolism in the novel that keeps readers on their toes as they go through the novel. For example, in Chapter One, readers learn about the green light. This green light is to be found at the end of Daisy's East Egg dock, and it symbolizes hope and dreams for a good future. In the novel green represents hope, renewal, and promise, so because Gatsby wants a future with Daisy, the green light in Chapter One gives that light importance symbolically.

Another symbol in the novel is found in Chapter Two, on page 16, Fitzgerald introduces the reader to the opposite of future hope and promise offered by the green light -- the "foul wasteland" or the "valley of ashes" that is the book's present. The symbol of the foul wasteland links the reader with the money and success-driven culture that the characters live and thrive in. The drunken parties and pretensions that are witnessed at these parties is part of the foul wasteland, where there is a lot of phoniness.

Still another symbol in the book is the scene in which a man at a Gatsby party, who is perusing Gatsby's library, is "owl-eyed" (usually a symbol of wisdom or curiosity); this man is stunned that the books in the library are "real books." Given that the readers know Gatsby isn't everything he would like to have people believe about him, and that he isn't the great wise intellectual he portrays himself as, the symbol of the owl is ironic, designed to entertain the reader through character and symbolism. Fitzgerald uses white to describe Daisy, and it is fairly certain he used white to depict Daisy's original innocence. Daisy's car is white, her clothes are white and the paint on the walls of her house are white.

However, toward the end of the novel Daisy has been corrupted by Gatsby and the whole social scene, and she becomes careless and destructive. A reader can surmise that Fitzgerald is simply showing that even the purest in society can be corrupted and can turn bad.

What is there to be learned about how people lived and behaved the 1920s in New York City from this respected novel? An alert reader finds out that there was racial segregation, and that the rich folks had a kind of fear of the African-American community. The novel does also present a tone that is considered racist by today's standards. And there was negative stereotyping on page 73. Gatsby and the novel's narrator Nick were crossing the Queensboro Bridge and they looked out the window of their car to see a limo that was "…driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish Negroes, two bucks and a girl" (Fitzgerald, p. 73).