Book Report of The Great Gatsby

1. About the author.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St Paul, Minnesota of mixed Southern and Irish descent. He was given three names after the writer of The Star Spangled Banner, to whom he was distantly related. His father, Edward Fitzgerald, was a salesman, a Southern gentleman, whose furniture business had failed. His greater impact to him was “even if your business has failed，we have to maintain the habit of generous style”. Mary McQuillan, his mother, was the daughter of a successful wholesale grocer, and devoted to her only son. Fitzgerald entered Princeton University in 1913, where he spent most of his time doing social activities. He left his studies in 1917 because of his poor academic records, and took up a commission in the US Army. His experiences during World War I were more peaceful than Hemingway's - he never saw action and even did not go to France. The turning point in his life was when he met Zelda Sayre while he was at one of the bases where he trained in 1918, herself as the daughter of a justice from Alabama Supreme Court and an aspiring writer. He proposed to her but failed as she thought he was just a poor boy. In 1920 appeared Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise. The book gained a success which Fitzgerald celebrated energetically in parties and married Zelda successfully. Zelda danced on people's dinner tables in endless parties to celebrate the immediate success. But that was not to be the ending for the Fitzgerald. They lived in New York City. He drank too much. She spent too much money. He promised himself to live a less costly life. Always, however, he spent more than he earned from writing. In 1925, Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby, considered great work. Although it initially met with little commercial success, this novel about the American dream of material success has become one of the most popular widely read and critically acclaimed works of fiction in American literature. The life of the title character, Jay Gatsby, has been compared to Fitzgerald’s life. While living in the French Riviera, Zelda’s illness became serious. She suddenly began to practice ballet, dancing night and day. After a second nervous breakdown, she was hospitalized for mental illness in Carolina. During the last years of his life, Fitzgerald lived in Hollywood, earning his living as a screenwriter. He died of heart attack at the age of 45. In 1948, the hospital at which Zelda was a patient caught fire, causing her death.

2. Background.

The novel takes place following the First World War. At that time, American society enjoyed prosperity during the roaring 1920s as the economy soared. The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s most

famous novel, is widely considered to be a literary classic and a contender for the title "Great American Novel". The book is consistently ranked among the greatest works of American literature. “Sensitive and symbolic treatment of themes of contemporary life related with irony and pathos to the legendry of the American dream”. The author showed the development and disillusion of American dream to people by means of Gatsby’s story, just as the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg of the valley of ashes witness the corruption of American society and the disillusion of American dream in that age. It i

s Fitzgerald’s first novel, also is the most famous one. It is a great novel about the American dream and jazz age, very thoughtful.

3. Summary.

The Great Gatsby mainly tells of Gatsby’s quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. They meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby a poor officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas. Daisy marries the brutal, humiliating, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. Nick Garaway, the narrator of the story, is a young Mid-westerner who sells bonds in New York. He lives at West Egg, Long Island, which is separated from the city by an ash-dump. His neighbor is Jay Gatsby, who is a mysterious man, whose mansion and fabulous entertainments are financed by bootlegging and other criminal activities. When Gatsby was a poor army officer, he had fallen in love with Daisy, Nick’s beautiful cousin, but later Daisy married Tom Buchanan, who is wealthy but intelligent and brutal. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means available to him with a view to regaining Daisy’s love. However, Daisy is not what she used to be. She is in pursuit of money and social status. “Her voice is full of money”, Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel’s most famous descriptions. With huge wealth accumulated, Gatsby buys mansion across Long Island from Daisy’s noble East Egg address. Throws generous parties, and waits for Daisy to appear. When she does, events carries up with all the tragic inevitability of a Greed dream. Then with the help of Nick Gatsby tries to win Daisy back with extravagant devotion. Meanwhile Daisy’s husband takes another woman Myrtle Wilson, as his mistress. When Mr. Wilson, a garage man, becomes jealous and imprisons her in the room, Myrtle escapes, runs out on the highway, and accidently hit by Daisy, who drives the car at that moment. Gatsby tries to help Daisy, and Tom tells Wilson that it was Gatsby who kills his wife. Wilson shoots Gatsby and then himself. At the end of the story, Nick thinks over Gatsby’s bream and decides to go back home to the West.

4. Impressions and comments.

There is no doubt that The Great Gatsby of Fitzgerald is a great work. It shows the development and disillusion of the American dream by means of Gatsby’s story, poor Gatsby chased his dreams of wealth and romantic love in all his life, but finally failed and lost his life. Although Gatsby failed finally, we have to admit that he is a great man; Nick has ever said to Gatsby “you are worth the whole damn bunch put together.” He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. The “green light” that Gatsby chased and believed in just is an illusion, he just can’t figure out where is dream world and where is reality world, so he lost in his dreams. The sharp contrast between dream and reality not only explains Gatsby’s failure at the end, it also explains the meaninglessness of that age. In a wor

d, these contrasts provide the readers with a panorama of 1920s. The loss of the American dream reflects the corruption of people’s morality.

As far as I am concerned, this story can serve as a reminder for us. To live a meaningful life, we should carefully choose some dreams to pursue. And in the process of fulfilling our dreams, we should always be conscious about what we really desire. Anyhow, only by pursuing the proper dreams can we finally get to the happiness and success. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic

future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….and one fine morning so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.