A refracted vision of America The Great Gatsby is like a mirror of the America of the 1920's. America in the Great Gatsby is a fundamental notion and the novel cannot be studied without the historical context of the time. The novel reflects the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties and the opposition between East and West. The Great Gatsby emphasizes the strange association between materialism and spiritualism, which is crucial to the Puritan ethic. Gatsby is seeking wealth because […]
Introduction In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald condensed the story's events. It appears that two important changes were introduced: Fitzgerald suppressed a long episode of Gatsby's childhood in order to heighten the sense of mystery surrounding his protagonist's youth. This fragment was then turned into a short story Absolution that was published in a review Mercury. The second important change concerned the order of the events and the fact that in the original version it was Gatsby who spoke. In the […]
The Great Gatsby is the third novel of Fitzgerald, published in 1925 after This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and the Damned (1922). Introduction It is a turning point in Fitzgerald literary career because it was to improve on his previous works: he tested new techniques and insisted on the novelty of his enterprise: 'I want to write something new, something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and 'intricately patterned' (letter to Perkins, agent at Scribners). Indeed, Fitzgerald devoted […]
