MIDNIGHT´S CHILDREN Salman Rushdie

THE GREAT GATSBY by F Scott Fitzgerald

Biographical Note

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in Minnesota to Irish and English ancestry and grew up with great educational opportunities. His intelliegence and literary abilities were recognised even while he was a child and he published his first short story at the age of 13. His parents were wealthy and upper middle class and sent him to prestigious Catholic preparatory (ie private) schools. He studied at Princeton, and it was during this time that he met the debutante and socialite Ginevra King who is considered to be his model for Daisy in The Great Gatsby. (Princeton was also where he first began the heavy drinking that led to a lifelong struggle with alcoholism.) Fitzgerald  dropped out of Princeton to join the army and, fearing he would be killed in the 1st World War without ever having published anything of note, he hastily wrote The Romantic Egotist. 

However, Fitgerald went on to marry another´´golden girl´´ Zelda Sayre. It was an intense, tumultuous relationship, constantly rocked by her mental instability, his alcoholism, their lavish and hedonistic lifestyle and financial problems which impinged on his ability to write what he wanted. In many ways they were the archetypal ´´beautiful and damned´´ and Fitzgerald´s novels reflect their own issues and experiences of youthful optimism and promise contrasted with later diappointment at harsh reality. Zelda was institutionalised for some kind of bipolar disorder, while Fitgerald became a Hollywood screenwrite or as he saw it ´´a hack´´. He died of a heart attack at only 44 leaving behind four completed novels, one unfinished novel and numerous short stories. Among them was the masterpiece The Great Gatsby, which is irresistable from its very first enigmatic opening lines:

'In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'

The Novel

The novel The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway, an unassuming young man who moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to work in finance, renting a house on Long Island. The area is populated by the ´´new rich´´ as opposed to those with ´´old money´´ that is entrepreneurs, opportunists and bootleggers as opposed to aristocrats. Nick’s next-door neighbor is Gatsby, an interesting figure who throws decadent parties every weekend and whose origins and fortune are shrouded in mystery.

Nick however was educated at Yale and has social connections in East Egg, a fashionable area of Long Island home to the established upper class including his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom. They introduce him to Jordan Baker, a beautiful young cynic, who soon tells him that the Buchanan´s marriage is in trouble. Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, a married woman who lives in the valley of ashes, a gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. At a vulgar, drunken party in the apartment that Tom keeps for the affair in New York, Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about Daisy, and he reacts violently by punching her in the face and breaking her nose.

Nick is eventually invited to one of Gatsby’s legendary parties and meets Gatsby himself. Through Jordan, Nick learns that Gatsby has been in love with Daisy since he met her in 1917 in Louisville and it later becomes clear that both Gatsby’s acquisition of wealth and his display of it are motivated by the wish to win over Daisy. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, and brings Gatsby too. Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection and resume their romantic affair.

After a short time, Tom grows suspicious of his wife’s relationship with Gatsby and Gatsby himself. He confronts Gatsby publicly in a suite at the Plaza Hotel and announces to his wife that Gatsby is a criminal—his fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. When the affair is made public and Daisy is asked to publicly declare her love for Gatsby and state that she has never really loved Tom, it becomes clear that she does not love Gatsby and never did. She elects to stay with Tom and Gatsby´s dream crumbles to dust. 

The consequences of their tragic drive back to Long Island demonstrate the real nature of all the characters, especially Gatsby´s and the Buchanans´. Nick reflects on the selfishness and moral decay of life among the wealthy on the East Coast. We see that those who come from´´old money´´ are not necessarily morally.

Just as Gatsby’s dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of happiness and individualism has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth. The first line echoes in our minds as we understand that the life of the narrator Nick has been forever marked by the ethical lessons implicit in the novel.

Questions to think about while or after reading:

1.    “Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.” To what extent is the novel an exploration of platonic as opposed to romantic love?

            What is it that makes Jay Gatsby ´´the great Gatsby´´?  Does his greatness lie in his willingness to pursue the American dream to its logical end or in his capacity to risk all forlove?

        
      It has been said ´´there is no such thing as a perfect novel. But if there were The Great Gatsby would be it.´´ In your eyes what does constitute a perfect novel in terms of narrative, character, imagery and emotional power?