Analysis of the work "The Great Gatsby" (Francis Scott Fitzgerald). Who is the Great Gatsby? Gatsby's real name

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Frame from the film "The Great Gatsby" (2013)

“If you measure a person by her ability to express herself, then there was something truly magnificent in Gatsby, some kind of heightened sensitivity to all the promises of life ... It was a rare gift of hope, a romantic fuse that I have never seen in anyone else.”

Nick Carraway comes from a respectable wealthy family in a small town in the Midwest. In 1915 he graduated from Yale University, then fought in Europe; returning to his hometown after the war, "could not find a place for himself" and in 1922 moved east - to New York, to study credit business. He settled in the suburbs: on the outskirts of Long Island Sound, two completely identical capes protrude into the water, separated by a narrow bay: East Egg and West Egg; in West Egg, between two luxurious villas, and perched a little house, which he rented for eighty dollars a month. In the more fashionable East Egg, his second cousin Daisy lives. She is married to Tom Buchanan. Tom is fabulously rich, he studied at Yale at the same time as Nick, and even then Nick was very unsympathetic to his aggressively flawed demeanor. Tom started cheating on his wife on their honeymoon; and now he doesn't feel the need to hide from Nick his relationship with Myrtle Wilson, the wife of a gas station owner and auto repairer, located halfway between West Egg and New York, where the highway runs almost close to the railroad and a quarter of a mile runs beside her. Daisy also knows about her husband's infidelities, it torments her; from his first visit to them, Nick had the impression that Daisy needed to run away from this house immediately.

Music plays in Nick's neighbor's villa on summer evenings; on weekends, his Rolls-Royce turns into a shuttle bus to New York, carrying huge numbers of guests, and a multi-seat Ford runs between the villa and the station. On Mondays, eight servants and a specially hired second gardener remove traces of destruction all day.

Soon Nick receives an official invitation to Mr. Gatsby's party and turns out to be one of the very few invited: they did not expect an invitation there, they just came there. No one in the crowd of guests knows the host closely; not everyone knows him by sight. His mysterious, romantic figure is of keen interest - and speculation multiplies in the crowd: some claim that Gatsby killed a man, others that he is a bootlegger, von Hindenburg's nephew and second cousin of the devil, and during the war he was a German spy. It is also said that he studied at Oxford. In the crowd of his guests, he is lonely, sober and reserved. The society that enjoyed Gatsby's hospitality repaid him by not knowing anything about him. Nick meets Gatsby almost by accident: after talking with some man - they turned out to be fellow soldiers - he noticed that he was somewhat embarrassed by the position of a guest who was unfamiliar with the owner, and received in response: "So it's me - Gatsby."

After several meetings, Gatsby asks Nick for a favor. Embarrassed, he beats around the bush for a long time, as proof of his respectability, he presents a medal from Montenegro, which he was awarded in the war, and his Oxford photograph; finally, quite childishly, he says that Jordan Baker will state his request - Nick met her at a visit to Gatsby, and met at his sister Daisy's house: Jordan was her friend. The request was simple - to invite Daisy to his place for tea sometime, so that, allegedly by chance, in a neighborly way, Gatsby could see her, Jordan said that in the fall of 1917 in Louisville, their hometown with Daisy, Daisy and Gatsby , then a young lieutenant, loved each other, but were forced to part; he was sent to Europe, and she married Tom Buchanan a year and a half later. But before the wedding dinner, throwing the groom's gift into the trash - a pearl necklace for three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Daisy got drunk like a shoemaker, and, clutching a letter in one hand and a bottle of Sauternes in the other, begged her friend to refuse on her behalf groom. However, they put her in a cold bath, gave her a sniff of ammonia, put a necklace around her neck, and she "married like a pretty one."

The meeting took place; Daisy saw his house (for Gatsby this was very important); the festivities at the villa ceased, and Gatsby replaced all the servants with others "who know how to keep silent," for Daisy began to visit him often. Gatsby also met Tom, who showed an active rejection of himself, his house, his guests and became interested in the source of his income, which is probably doubtful.

One day, after lunch at Tom and Daisy's, Nick, Jordan and Gatsby and their hosts go to New York for fun. Everyone understands that Tom and Gatsby have entered into a decisive battle for Daisy. At the same time, Tom, Nick and Jordan are driving in Gatsby's cream Rolls-Royce, and he and Daisy are in Tom's dark blue Ford. Halfway through, Tom stops by to refuel at Wilson's - he announces that he intends to leave forever and take his wife away: he suspected something was wrong, but does not connect her betrayal with Tom. Tom goes berserk when he realizes that he can lose both his wife and his mistress at the same time. In New York, the explanation took place: Gatsby tells Tom that Daisy does not love him and never loved him, he was just poor and she was tired of waiting; in response to this, Tom exposes the source of his income, indeed illegal: bootlegging on a very large scale. Daisy is shocked; she tends to stay with Tom. Realizing that he won, on the way back Tom tells his wife to ride in a cream car with Gatsby; the others follow her in a stray navy blue Ford. When they arrive at the gas station, they see the crowd and the body of Myrtle, who has been hit. From the window, she saw Tom with Jordan, whom she mistook for Daisy, in a big cream-colored car, but her husband locked her and she could not come; as the car was returning, Myrtle, freeing herself from under the lock, rushed towards it. Everything happened very quickly, there were practically no witnesses, the car did not even slow down. Nick learned from Gatsby that Daisy was driving.

Until morning, Gatsby stayed under her windows to be there if she suddenly needed. Nick looked out the window - Tom and Daisy were sitting together as one thing - spouses or, perhaps, accomplices; but he did not have the heart to take away the last hope from Gatsby.

It wasn't until four in the morning that Nick heard a cab with Gatsby pull up. Nick didn't want to leave him alone, and since that morning Gatsby wanted to talk about Daisy, and Daisy only, that's when Nick learned the strange story of his youth and his love.

James Goetz - that was his real name. He changed it at the age of seventeen, when he saw Dan Cody's yacht and warned Dan about the beginning of the storm. His parents were simple farmers - in his dreams he never recognized them as his parents. He invented Jay Gatsby for himself in full accordance with the tastes and concepts of a seventeen-year-old boy and remained true to this fiction to the very end. He recognized women early and, spoiled by them, learned to despise them. Confusion constantly reigned in his soul; he believed in the unreality of the real, in the fact that the world rests firmly and reliably on the wings of a fairy. When he stood up at the oars and looked up at the white hull of Cody's yacht, it seemed to him that everything beautiful and amazing that exists in the world was embodied in it. Dan Cody, a millionaire who made his fortune in the Nevada silver mines and operations with Montana oil, took him on a yacht - first as a steward, then he became a senior officer, captain, secretary; for five years they sailed around the continent; then Dan died. Of the twenty-five thousand dollar inheritance that Dan left him, he did not receive a cent, never understanding the legal intricacies due to which. And he was left with what the peculiar experience of those five years gave him: the abstract schema of Jay Gatsby took on flesh and blood and became human. Daisy was the first "society girl" on his path. From the first time she seemed to him dizzyingly desirable. He began to visit her at home - first in the company of other officers, then alone. He had never seen such a beautiful house, but he knew well that he had not come to this house by right. The military uniform, which served him as an invisibility cloak, could fall off his shoulders at any moment, and under it he was just a young man without family and tribe and without a penny in his pocket. And so he tried not to waste time. Probably, he expected to take what he could and leave, but it turned out that he doomed himself to the eternal service of the shrine. She disappeared into her rich home, into her rich life filled to the brim, and he was left with nothing - except for the strange feeling that they are now husband and wife. With stunning clarity, Gatsby comprehended the secret of youth in captivity and under the protection of wealth ...

He had a successful military career: at the end of the war he was already a major. He rushed home, but due to a misunderstanding ended up in Oxford - anyone from the armies of the victorious countries could take a course for free at any university in Europe. Daisy's letters were full of nervousness and melancholy; she was young; she wanted to arrange her life now, today; she had to make a decision, and for it to come, some kind of force was required - love, money, undeniable benefits; Tom appeared. Gatsby received the letter while still at Oxford.

Saying goodbye to Gatsby that morning, Nick, already moving away, shouted: “Insignificance on insignificance, that's who they are! You alone are worth them all put together!” How glad he was later to have said those words!

Not hoping for justice, the distraught Wilson came to Tom, learned from him who owns the car, and killed Gatsby, and then himself.

Three people were present at the funeral: Nick, Mr. Getz - Gatsby's father, and only one of the many guests, although Nick called all the Gatsby partygoers. When he called Daisy, he was told that she and Tom had left and left no address.

They were careless creatures, Tom and Daisy, they broke things and people, and then ran away and hid for their money, their all-consuming carelessness or something else that their union rested on, leaving others to clean up after them.

The economic underpinnings of Francis Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby seem extremely transparent. The Lost Generation, the American Dream, the era of jazz, fast money and desperate parties - even if Fitzgerald did not come up with all these concepts, he embodied them in his works so vividly that it is already impossible to imagine one without the other. The story of Jay Gatsby's wealth, despite the mist, is also sewn with white thread - at the request of the editor, Fitzgerald directly reports that his mysterious hero, in fact, like many Americans during the years of Prohibition, made a fortune in the underground trade in alcohol. And then he tried to throw all this ostentatious luxury at the feet of Daisy in order to return the former love - and not to say that this was a fundamentally wrong way to conquer a woman whose voice "rings money." The only mystery that, by and large, has not been solved in the novel is why Gatsby, for all his achievements, still fails to do this? What turned out to be fundamentally more expensive than money in the age of new capitals and extremely mobile morality? And what actually led both Gatsby and Fitzgerald himself to the realization of the American dream? These questions are answered by the Yegor Gaidar Foundation, partner N+1 by project.

1

She had recently turned eighteen—she was exactly two years older than me—but no other girl in all of Louisville had been as astonishingly successful as Daisy. She wore nothing but white, and she owned a snow-white roadster, and the phone in their house rang day and night because the young officers from Camp Taylor dreamed of spending an evening or "well, at least an hour" in her sweet company. As I passed her house that morning, I saw a white roadster parked by the curb with Daisy in it, accompanied by a young lieutenant whom I had never seen here before.

Attempts to prove that not all the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald are autobiographical, and that one should not put an equal sign between the main character and the personality of the writer himself, are almost a matter of honor among the researchers of his work. Yes, and Fitzgerald himself repeatedly complained that, having written the novel This Side of Paradise, which brought him fame and money, he doomed himself to eternal comparison with his heroes, who were perceived by readers and critics as his alter ego. However, in the case of The Great Gatsby (1925), by no means the first work by an American writer, the temptation to draw a parallel between Fitzgerald's personal story and Jay Gatsby's storyline is not only great, but also opens up interesting possibilities for understanding the essence of the conflict in the novel. .

In 1917, almost graduating from Princeton University - only final exams remained - Fitzgerald volunteered for the front and soon met young Zelda Sayer, a girl from a wealthy family, the daughter of an Alabama state judge, a prominent bride. However, Fitzgerald was poor - and Zelda's parents opposed the unequal marriage. Zelda herself, however, did not feel much desire to challenge the decision of her parents either. But Fitzgerald decided to achieve his goal at all costs, although, unlike Jay Gatsby, he relied not on the criminal business, but on literary success. So his first novel was born, after which fame fell on the writer, magazines began to publish his texts like hot cakes, and the fees for one story reached 4 thousand dollars. After the first literary success and the marriage that followed, the couple became the eternal heroes of the gossip column. Traveling around Europe, luxurious parties, eccentric antics - later Fitzgerald said that sometimes he himself doubted where the characters of his novels were, and where they were real with Zelda.

Fitzgerald, like the hero of The Great Gatsby, brought to life the famous "American dream" - to achieve success from scratch, to win a place in the sun with only systematic work. By the way, this was not a novelty for the Fitzgerald family - his grandfather, an Irish immigrant, began his career as a messenger, and ended up as the owner of an impressive fortune, which, however, his son, Fitzgerald's father, quickly squandered. The future writer perceived the ruin of the family very painfully, which, apparently, gave him additional incentives for a decisive breakthrough. He himself, having turned his life with Zelda into an endless series of parties, came up with a phrase that is ideally suited to describe the hysterical fun of the post-war period - the Jazz Age. Finally, even though he never reached the fronts of the First World War, Fitzgerald, along with Hemingway, became one of the most representative figures of the post-war “lost generation”.

In retrospect, it seems that both Fitzgerald and his Jay Gatsby, with a certain commonality of their biographies, brought to life all the most important ideals of their time. However, there were also differences. Fitzgerald achieved success, threw wealth at Zelda's feet, married her, became the highest paid writer in the United States, and nothing marred his reputation, except for evil tongues that claimed he was selling talent for money. And Gatsby's "American dream" failed. What's the matter? Obviously, the source of wealth. But if we assume that bootlegging was considered something immoral for American society, then why does the same morality calmly refer to Daisy's impunity for the crime she committed? Or did Fitzgerald doubt the justification of his "American dream"?

2

I was born in the Midwest to a wealthy family that is no longer alive. I grew up in America, but then I went to study at Oxford - according to family tradition. Several generations of my ancestors studied at Oxford.

He looked at me sideways - and I understood why Jordan Baker suspected him of lying. He uttered the words "studied at Oxford" somehow hastily, half swallowing, half choking, as if he knew from experience that they were difficult for him. And from this shadow of doubt, everything he said lost its power, and I thought: is there really some kind of terrible secret in his life?

F.S. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. Per. N.N. Lavrov

The United States emerged from the First World War in a state that at that time could not be compared with any European country. Having entered the war a year before its end, the States did not have time to suffer serious human losses and, moreover, did not expose their territory to a blow, but successfully acted as the main creditor of England and regularly carried out military orders. This partly explains the rapid economic growth that followed in the 1920s. Low taxes, weak antitrust enforcement, and generally minimal government intervention led to an industrial boom in the United States during this decade. This primarily concerned the automotive industry, but in general, by the end of the 1920s, the United States produced more industrial products than the European countries participating in the war - at least more than England, France, Germany and Italy combined.

In hindsight, when it is known that this period of prosperity was followed by a rapid decline - the Great Depression, the researchers list a huge number of problems that all these years were ignored by the state and subsequently played a role. The first and main ones are usually called cheap loans, which were very popular among the population, and stock exchange games, but there were others: the fall of traditional industries, including agriculture and energy, the crisis in rail transportation and shipbuilding, and growing unemployment - about 200 thousand people annually over the course of a decade, they were replaced by machine labor, the concentration of control over industry in the hands of only 200 corporations and a sharp stratification of the population in terms of income. By the end of the 1920s, the middle class made up only 20 percent of the total population, while 40 percent of the national wealth was concentrated in the hands of one percent, and more than half of the population was below the subsistence level.

All this, at first glance, lies outside Fitzgerald's field of vision and has little to do with The Great Gatsby - with the possible exception of the swiftness with which the protagonist makes his fortune after the war, as well as his own field of activity mentioned in passing by the narrator Nick Carraway - lending. But the conflict that the writer subtly depicts, forcing other characters to constantly look for clues in Jay Gatsby's past in order to clarify his identity for themselves, turns out to be no less important for American society in the 1920s. From the retrospective positions of the search for the causes of the Great Depression, this significance of the purity of the origin of capital and the sincerity of aspirations is difficult to explain. However, it becomes much clearer if we connect it with the events that took place in the United States before the First World War, but continued to influence society after it.

The anguish, inequality and luxury of the "Jazz Age" in the United States, in addition to the actual war, was preceded by the so-called era of progressivism. Stable economic growth, certain political transformations and years of prolonged peace after the Civil War led to the emergence of a large number of large capitalists who controlled the key resources of the continent and therefore influenced the political sphere. By the 1890s, the dominance of big business in politics led to the emergence of movements that were dissatisfied with the current situation and demanded the growth of political inclusion - the ability to influence the political process for a larger number of social groups. It was these movements that became the basis for the political reforms in the United States that followed in the first third of the 20th century - the emergence of women's voting rights, the introduction of direct elections to the Senate, the limitation of election campaign funding and the transfer of capital from direct influence on politics to indirect - through a system of special corporate and charitable funds.

The American sociologist William Domhoff believes that the networks of foundations and think tanks (policy-planning organizations) created at the beginning of the 20th century, such as the Carnegie Foundation (1910) or the Rockefeller Foundation (1913), became a kind of deal between the elites and the progressive middle class. The demand for large capital out of politics and the demand for a drastic reduction in corruption and corporate power were granted. In exchange, large capitalists got the opportunity to influence public opinion and the process of developing state decisions indirectly - through public expertise and analytics conducted by their funds. At the same time, the political process and the process of developing government decisions in the United States have become more transparent and legitimate. According to the idea, the hatred of the middle class towards the capitalists as the main culprits of corruption was to be replaced, if not with approval, then at least with respect, since now they helped the state to pursue a more effective policy, and the society to discuss important problems.

The Progressivist era's demand for sincerity and transparency resulted in the rise of investigative journalism. It was during this period that the American media became the fourth power, actively covering cases of merging of the state and business, redistribution of budgets, and scandals at the top. Prominent journalists of that time - Joseph Steffens, Samuel Adams, Jacob Rees, Elton Sinclair, Aida Tarbell - are models for the American press today. But there were also opposite trends. In 1917, Bertie Charles Forbes created a magazine whose original title, Causes and Deeds, was changed at the last moment to the name of the founder. Forbes, seeing the excesses of the fourth power, up to the denigration of capitalists and politicians, wanted to show the positive aspects of the changes taking place, along the way forming the most complete source of information about business for the capitalists themselves.

So the questions “where does the money come from?” and “what do you spend them on?” became an integral part of the public discourse of American society in the 1900s–1920s. Given the rise of the middle class and the opportunities for super-profits that opened up after the First World War, the demands for transparency began to extend to the "new" capitalists, which, of course, included Jay Gatsby. The conflict between him and Tom Buchanan is not so much a struggle between two groups of entrepreneurs - new and old school, as a manifestation of the so-called "American culture wars", the struggle of conservative, continental America against the liberal America of big cities - the one that today we would called postmodern.

The "culture wars" in the 1920s began to come to the fore for two reasons. The first was based on the obvious progress of technology - printed newspapers became cheaper, and radio made it possible to quickly and fairly democratically convey information to the most provincial American farmers. Continental America and the America of the big cities have suddenly become much more connected than before, and aware of their value differences. The second reason was the transfer of political discussions from the walls of the White House to the public space. Liberalization and the subsequent increase in political competition led to the fact that two American parties - Republicans and Democrats - began to support and deepen this sociocultural conflict both in their election campaigns and in political decisions in favor of one or another cultural community.

Expert opinion

In the 1920s, the class conflict was replaced by a sociocultural one. For the first time, the United States was divided into two socio-cultural nations, the existence of which has an impact on today's America. The first one is supporters of traditional conservative values, and the second one is supporters of postmodern values, then called "new". Their striking manifestation in the 1920s was the birth and development of the sexual revolution in the United States. Then Sigmund Freud gained the highest popularity in America. In the 1920s, the slogan of equality between women and men in all behavioral areas, including sex, was first put forward. This new socio-cultural ideology, this "other America" was not as powerful as it is today, but the culture war between them and the conservatives unfolded on an extremely large scale.

Representatives of the new social culture also announced that the meaning of life is entertainment, entertainment. While traditional America was very conservative in socio-cultural terms. For example, she not only opposed conspicuous consumption and sexual freedom, but also demanded the introduction of Prohibition, believed that it was alcoholism that was the basis of another culture and “spoiled” traditional American mores. The Republican Party, which supported Prohibition, was on the side of the traditionalists in this socio-cultural conflict. True, a contradiction was soon discovered: the dry law was adopted, but a significant part of the United States - not only new, but also old Americans - still wanted to drink alcohol. And the weakness of this law was that it banned the production of alcohol, but did not prohibit its use. As a result, alcohol was sold, for example, in pharmacies. A shadow market developed - bootlegging, which was just what the Great Gatsby was doing.

Vladimir Sogrin,
Head of the Center for North American Studies of the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences

You can read the full interview with the expert.

3

I already know what your “pharmacies” were like. - He turned to us and continued pattering: - He and Wolfshim took over hundreds of small pharmacies in the back streets of New York and Chicago and sold alcohol behind drugstore counters. Here's one of his tricks. At first sight I suspected him of being a bootlegger and, as you can see, I was almost not mistaken.

And even if so? said Gatsby politely. - Your friend Walter Chase, for example, did not hesitate to join us in the company.

F.S. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. Per. N.N. Lavrov

The economic and political thought of the United States during the time of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his heroes gave rise to an impressive number of rationalist and empirical concepts on the subject of a strong state and centralized government. Since the end of the 19th century, against the background of the high dependence of politics on big capital, even before the onset of the progressive era, scholars have seen the solution to most problems in strengthening state functions and centralizing a divided America into states.

The father of modern public administration, Frank Goodnow, published the classic work Politics and Public Administration in 1900, where he first described the need for a separation of political and bureaucratic (public administration) spheres in the United States. The introduction of meritocratic selection, a regular public service that does not depend on the election results, the optimal distribution of powers between state structures, building a hierarchy and subordination of disparate agencies and departments in the states - all these measures, in his opinion, should have become an additional deterrent for big capital. But in order for them to start working, the "weak" state in the United States had to become strong, which means that it was necessary to reduce the powers of the states in favor of the federal center and increase the tax burden on business in favor of the unprotected layers.

Goodnow's proposals have largely been put into practice. Presidents William Taft and Woodrow Wilson, although they were representatives of different parties, consistently increased the presence of the state in the economy. Wilson dramatically raised tax rates and made the scale itself progressive. The autonomy of the individual states was reduced in favor of independent central government agencies. And although after the First World War, American presidents partially “rolled back” the innovations of the progressive era, the very degree of state intervention in the economy and the center - in the affairs of individual states, could not be returned to its previous positions.

Prohibition was the most prominent example of government regulation in America during that period. In fact, it has turned into what modern economics calls a “non-market failure”. This phenomenon was described in 1988 by the economist Charles Wolfe in his book Markets and the State, where he first showed that any government regulation faces three types of problems. It disrupts the natural market equilibrium by distorting the incentives of firms, creates opaque control structures that fall into either corruption or imitation of control, and ultimately creates conditions for the emergence of natural monopolies and high barriers to entry into the market. All these failures of state regulation were used by Jay Gastby in his bootlegging. The inability to control the implementation of Prohibition and the presence of legal loopholes to circumvent it turned risk-taking American entrepreneurs into millionaires who threw chic parties with the easy money they got. In other areas, excessive government regulation made entrepreneurs like Tom Buchanan, with their more traditional and legal businesses, the victims. Against the background of the described socio-cultural conflict between the "old" and "new" Americas, the confrontation between these two groups only intensified.

Additional support for the "request for sincerity" - both in politics and in business - in Ford and Fitzgerald's America was provided by the Chicago School of Politics. Its most prominent representative, Charles Merriam, described politics as a market where people, who are "power-hungry animals", seek not to increase the public good, but to realize their own selfish interests. The desire to subjugate other individuals to one's will becomes the dominant motive for the political activity of any individual. In addition, in politics, as in the market, there is trade, division of spheres of influence, votes are bought and attempts to corrupt each other arise. This academic interpretation of politics also supported the public demand for transparency, increased transparency of political processes, and also attached particular importance to the reputation of politicians. At the same time, reputation did not necessarily concern only the political past. Gatsby was not a politician, but he was forced to get involved in the race of reputations, which eventually destroyed him.

Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby" seems absolutely equal to himself. Nevertheless, a light detective story, a strong autobiographical component, and the vagueness of the image of Jay Gatsby are just the tip of the iceberg, which is based on sharp social contradictions, implicated in the rapid economic growth of the post-war years and the problems of state regulation. Transferring elements of his own biography to his hero, Fitzgerald, however, deprived him of the most important component for that time - an impeccable past. As a result, the matter turns out not even in Oxford, where Gatsby never studied, and not in bootlegging, which allowed Gatsby to quickly make a fortune, but in the fact that he cannot ensure his reputation for transparency and convince others of his sincerity. In addition, being a nouveau riche, Gatsby too clearly gravitates towards a “new” sociocultural type of behavior - parties, dubious entertainment, free morals. Trying to get Daisy's attention in this way, he actually creates only an additional barrier on the way to her. And this conflict turns out to be so strong that even the crime committed by Daisy fades against its background, the responsibility for which ultimately falls on Gatsby.

Mikhail Komin, Tatyana Trofimova

Literature

Allen F.L. Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Nineteen-Twenties. New York; London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1931.

Decker J.L. Gatsby's Pristine Dream: The Diminishment of the Self-Made Man in the Tribal Twenties. 1994.

Dumenil L. The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995.

Goldhurst W.F. Scott Fitzgerald and his Contemporaries. 1963.

Parrish M.E. Anxious Decades: America in Prosperity and Depression, 1920-1941. New York: W.W. Norton, 1992.

Stein H.H. American Muckrakers and Muckraking: The 50-Year Scholarship // Journalism Quarterly. Spring 1979 Vol. 56. No. 1. P. 9-17.

The Great Gatsby was written in 1925. This is the year of industrialization, the development of various technologies and discoveries in the scientific field. On our site you can read a summary of The Great Gatsby for the reader's diary. This is a difficult period when people expected a new war and were in a "suspended" state.

The main characters of the novel

The main character of the work is Jay Gatsby. Or the narrator himself Nick Carraway, personally acquainted with Gatsby and leading the story about him. Gatsby is a rich man in his 30s. Almost nothing is known about his occupation, but it is said that he participated in the war and killed a man there.

Gatsby himself is quite secretive, sometimes he does not even appear at his own parties. This person is persistent and purposeful, noble and romantic. And he also has a cherished dream: That someday he will talk to Daisy Buchanan - a girl with whom he has long been in love.

She is 23 years old and comes from a rich family, and she also has a husband who cheats on her ...

Fitzgerald "The Great Gatsby" in short

Francis Fitzgerald "The Great Gatsby" summary for the reader's diary:

The action of the work takes place in the 20s of the 20th century, in the era of jazz and the prohibition of alcohol. However, this did not prevent smugglers from smuggling liters of alcohol into the country.

Nick comes to his relative Daisy. He meets Gatsby. And after a friendly conversation with him, he decides to help him - he brings Daisy to the Gatsby estate, where they talk, and the man confesses his love to her.

Daisy reciprocates the feelings of the hero, but her husband tells unpleasant things about Gatsby that make her doubt her decision to divorce her husband. On the way, she accidentally hits a girl in a car - her husband's mistress, Gatsby takes the hit on himself, lying that he was driving.

The enraged husband of the girl kills Gatsby. But this happens after Daisy's betrayal - after all, after the incident, she simply runs away with her husband, without even leaving any message to Gatsby.

Conclusion:

The way Gatsby's dream was conveyed - that green light on the opposite side of the lake, to which the man's hand reached out ... this is a very beautiful metaphor, very touching and piercing. And that interesting thought - the real Daisy didn't even always live up to the image created in Gatsby's head.

After all, this is a fairly common problem when we fall in love with an image in our head, strive for it, and when we get it, we experience some disappointment and displeasure. But Gatsby was not disappointed, he saw an ideal in her, and she turned out to be superficial, even inhuman. Sad story. And Gatsby was really great in his own way.

See also: Remarque worked on writing the novel "Three Comrades" for four years and completed it in 1936. For a reader's diary, we recommend reading chapter by chapter. At first it was a small work called "Pat", which after a while was transformed into a full-fledged book about love, the backdrop for which was post-war Germany.

A short retelling of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

"The Great Gatsby" Fitzgerald summary:

The novel takes place in the early 1920s in America.

Nick Carraway, on behalf of whom the story is being told, settles in a small house in West Egg on Long Island. One day he visits his second cousin Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan, who live across the river in East Egg. There he meets golfer Jordan Baker.

Tom is an arrogant man with racist views, unfaithful to his wife and has a mistress named Myrtle - the wife of a New York car service owner - whom he later introduces to Nick. Daisy is aware of her husband's infidelity, but tries to ignore it. Daisy herself is a charming, but not too smart woman.

Near the house of Nick Carraway is a huge estate of the famous rich man Gatsby. On Saturdays, parties are held in this estate, where everyone can come. Nick receives an invitation to such a party (as it turns out, he was the only guest with an invitation), meets Jordan Baker there and meets the owner of the villa, Mr. Gatsby.

Gatsby is a man of thirty, with excellent manners, is a nouveau riche. He is an Oxford graduate, a war veteran who has risen from the lowest social ranks to his own position by his own efforts, but not everyone believes in these facts. The identity of Gatsby is considered mysterious.

For some reason, Gatsby takes Nick especially cordially and makes friends with him. He talks about himself, which seems strange to Nick. Indeed, everything turned out to be not just like that.

Jordan Baker, at the request of Gatsby, tells Nick the whole truth: as a soldier, Gatsby got into Daisy's house, and they fell madly in love with each other. They wanted to get married, but Gatsby had to go to the front, and the connection between the lovers was interrupted for a long time. Daisy, believing that Gatsby was dead, got engaged to Tom, but on the day of the wedding she received a letter from Gatsby. She did not manage to upset the wedding. The Buchanans began a family life, they had a daughter.

After learning where Daisy lives, Gatsby built his villa opposite. He held parties in the hope that one day Daisy would come too. And now, having met Nick, he asks to arrange a meeting for them.

The meeting happened, Gatsby and Daisy fell in love again, and both are extremely happy. During an explanation at the Plaza Hotel, Tom learns about the lovers, a scandal occurs. It is decided to drive back home: Nick, Jordan and Tom are in one car, Gatsby and Daisy in another.

At this time, Myrtle, having quarreled with her husband, runs out onto the road, and the car in which Gatsby and Daisy were driving knocks her down and hides. Suspicions fall on Gatsby. Nick meets Gatsby in the Buchanan garden and guesses that Daisy was driving. Upset by the death of his wife, Myrtle's husband finds Gatsby and kills him, and then shoots himself.

In addition to Nick, Jay Gatsby's father comes to the funeral. One of the guests is late. There is no one else: the Buchanans have gone away, Daisy has not even come. This upsets Nick. Gatsby's villa is deserted.

A few years later, Nick meets Tom, but their meeting is cold. Nick Carraway remembers Gatsby and realizes that there will never be another person like him in his life.

The novel teaches us fidelity and devotion; he teaches us to love and be ready for any actions for the sake of love; he teaches us honor and friendship.

Interesting: An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser was first published in 1925. The plot is based on the murder in 1906 by C. Gillette of his girlfriend Grace Brown and a similar case with C. Harris. To prepare for the literature lesson, we recommend reading for the reader's diary.

The content of the tragedy "The Great Gatsby" with quotes

« If you measure a person by her ability to express herself, then there was something truly magnificent in Gatsby, some kind of heightened sensitivity to all the promises of life ... It was a rare gift of hope, a romantic fuse, which I have never seen in anyone else».

He settled in the suburbs: on the outskirts of Long Island Sound, two completely identical capes protrude into the water, separated by a narrow bay: East Egg and West Egg; in West Egg, between two luxurious villas, and perched a little house, which he rented for eighty dollars a month. In the more fashionable East Egg, his second cousin Daisy lives. She is married to Tom Buchanan. Tom is fabulously rich, he studied at Yale at the same time as Nick, and even then Nick was very unsympathetic to his aggressively flawed demeanor.

Tom started cheating on his wife on their honeymoon; and now he doesn't feel the need to hide from Nick his relationship with Myrtle Wilson, the wife of a gas station owner and auto repairer, located halfway between West Egg and New York, where the highway runs almost close to the railroad and a quarter of a mile runs beside her. Daisy also knows about her husband's infidelities, it torments her; from his first visit to them, Nick had the impression that Daisy needed to run away from this house immediately.

His mysterious, romantic figure is of keen interest - and speculation multiplies in the crowd: some claim that Gatsby killed a man, others that he is a bootlegger, von Hindenburg's nephew and second cousin of the devil, and during the war he was a German spy. It is also said that he studied at Oxford.

In the crowd of his guests, he is lonely, sober and reserved. The society that enjoyed Gatsby's hospitality repaid him by not knowing anything about him. Nick meets Gatsby almost by accident: after talking with some man - they turned out to be fellow soldiers - he noticed that he was somewhat embarrassed by the position of a guest who was unfamiliar with the owner, and received in response: “ So it's me - Gatsby».

The request was simple - to invite Daisy to his place for tea sometime, so that, allegedly by chance, in a neighborly way, Gatsby could see her, Jordan said that in the fall of 1917 in Louisville, their hometown with Daisy, Daisy and Gatsby , then a young lieutenant, loved each other, but were forced to part; he was sent to Europe, and she married Tom Buchanan a year and a half later.

But before the wedding dinner, throwing the groom's gift into the trash - a pearl necklace for three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Daisy got drunk like a shoemaker, and, clutching a letter in one hand and a bottle of Sauternes in the other, begged her friend to refuse on her behalf groom. However, they put her in a cold bath, gave her a sniff of ammonia, put a necklace around her neck, and she got married like a pretty».

Halfway through, Tom stops by to refuel at Wilson's - he announces that he intends to leave forever and take his wife away: he suspected something was wrong, but does not connect her betrayal with Tom. Tom goes berserk when he realizes that he can lose both his wife and his mistress at the same time.

In New York, the explanation took place: Gatsby tells Tom that Daisy does not love him and never loved him, he was just poor and she was tired of waiting; in response to this, Tom exposes the source of his income, indeed illegal: bootlegging on a very large scale. Daisy is shocked; she tends to stay with Tom. Realizing that he won, on the way back Tom tells his wife to ride in a cream car with Gatsby; the others follow her in a stray navy blue Ford.

When they arrive at the gas station, they see the crowd and the body of Myrtle, who has been hit. From the window, she saw Tom with Jordan, whom she mistook for Daisy, in a big cream-colored car, but her husband locked her and she could not come; as the car was returning, Myrtle, freeing herself from under the lock, rushed towards it. Everything happened very quickly, there were practically no witnesses, the car did not even slow down. Nick learned from Gatsby that Daisy was driving.

He invented Jay Gatsby for himself in full accordance with the tastes and concepts of a seventeen-year-old boy and remained true to this fiction to the very end. He recognized women early and, spoiled by them, learned to despise them. Confusion constantly reigned in his soul; he believed in the unreality of the real, in the fact that the world rests firmly and reliably on the wings of a fairy.

When he stood up at the oars and looked up at the white hull of Cody's yacht, it seemed to him that everything beautiful and amazing that exists in the world was embodied in it. Dan Cody, a millionaire who made his fortune in the Nevada silver mines and operations with Montana oil, took him on a yacht - first as a steward, then he became a senior officer, captain, secretary; for five years they sailed around the continent; then Dan died.

Of the twenty-five thousand dollar inheritance that Dan left him, he did not receive a cent, never understanding the legal intricacies due to which. And he was left with what the peculiar experience of those five years gave him: the abstract schema of Jay Gatsby took on flesh and blood and became human. Daisy was the first society girl on his way.

From the first time she seemed to him dizzyingly desirable. He began to visit her at home - first in the company of other officers, then alone. He had never seen such a beautiful house, but he knew well that he had not come to this house by right. The military uniform, which served him as an invisibility cloak, could fall off his shoulders at any moment, and under it he was just a young man without family and tribe and without a penny in his pocket.

And so he tried not to waste time. Probably, he expected to take what he could and leave, but it turned out that he doomed himself to the eternal service of the shrine. She disappeared into her rich home, into her rich life filled to the brim, and he was left with nothing - except for the strange feeling that they are now husband and wife. With stunning clarity, Gatsby comprehended the secret of youth in captivity and under the protection of wealth ...

Daisy's letters were full of nervousness and melancholy; she was young; she wanted to arrange her life now, today; she had to make a decision, and for it to come, some kind of force was required - love, money, undeniable benefits; Tom appeared. Gatsby received the letter while still at Oxford.

Saying goodbye to Gatsby that morning, Nick, already moving away, shouted: Nothingness on nothingness, that's who they are! You alone are worth them all put together!" How glad he was later to have said those words!

Not hoping for justice, the distraught Wilson came to Tom, learned from him who owns the car, and killed Gatsby, and then himself.

The novel "The Great Gatsby", written in the spring of 1925, is really great. He did not bring glory to his author Francis during his lifetime.

Only thirty years later, in the 60s of the last century, the recognition of the classic came: according to the US school curriculum, you need to know the summary of The Great Gatsby. This is a "very American" book: Why did it "succeed"? Firstly, some features of Gatsby are characteristic of Francis Scott himself: earned wealth, dreams, flight of thought, to his dissolute, later beautiful wife Zelda Sayre, who led the writer to a stroke and death. Secondly, the author wrote about his generation in the same way as Pasternak, Sholokhov, as Pelevin writes now.

To truly gain an understanding of The Great Gatsby, a summary will do little to help. Open the end of the novel - here is its leitmotif. In one of the last paragraphs, Fitzgerald mentions a 17th-century romantic sailing ship rushing from the distant shores of Europe to the coast of Long Island (later the residence of Gatsby), the shining eyes of a Dutch sailor, "breathlessness" from the beauty of the surroundings and "the ability to admire." That's just such a person, as if torn out by a time machine from that very Dutch sailboat, Scott Fitzgerald "thrown" in the 20s of the last century. Could it be connected with this leitmotif that 17-year-old James Goetz, impressed by the yacht of millionaire Dan Cody, came up with a new name for himself, Jay Gatsby? He remains true to the end of the name, born of youthful fantasy.

When you open the book, you will understand why the Great Gatsby is considered a household name in the United States. The summary of the book is the story of Lieutenant Gatsby's acquaintance with the rich girl Daisy, Nick Carraway's second cousin, and his feelings for her. He went to the front, she married the millionaire Tom Buchanan. Even the fact that young Daisy on the eve of the wedding threw away the gift of her future husband - the fifty-thousandth - and got drunk "in the smoke" did not avert the wedding. However, two principles have always fought in it: the understanding of benefits and the desire for happiness. But if the girl was protected by wealth, then the Great Gatsby was in the warring army. A brief summary of his subsequent biography: the rank of major, scorched by the fire of the First World War, studying at Oxford. The young man understood that his beloved belonged to a different class, filled to the brim with luxury, life, so he strove to become rich by any means, even through the underground trade in alcohol, violating the "dry law" (bootlegging).

But all this happens behind the scenes. The novel shows him having already bought a residence in a resort suburb of New York, not far from the Buchanan mansion. The Great Gatsby chose the anonymous tactic of entering the world and contacting Daisy. The summary is as follows: organizing one after another endless noisy, in the end he wanted to invite Desi as well. He succeeded in his plan, she responded to his call, she was even ready to terminate her marriage. But Tom Buchanan, the husband, took Gatsby's naive explanation at the Plaza Hotel that Daisy would leave him as a call to action. He found out about the illegality of the income of the protagonist of the novel, told his wife about it. She chose to live with her husband, even knowing about his betrayal with his mistress. The Great Gatsby paid dearly for trying to "break into the high society". The brief content further acquires the features of fatality and tragedy. Tom Buchanan had an opportunity that he did not miss: Daisy, while driving Jay's car, hit Myrtle, George Wilson's wife, to death, then, frightened, left. When the inconsolable husband came to question him, Buchanan pointed to Jay. George Wilson shot the Great Gatsby, who was resting at his residence, and then committed suicide.

What did Fitzgerald want to say with this novel to his countrymen? He probably tried to "shake" the negative balance between dream, admiration, passion and commercialism, pragmatism.

Nick Carraway was from a wealthy and respectable family who lived in one of the towns in the Midwest. In 1915, he graduated from Yale University, then fought in Europe. Returning to his town after the war, he could not settle in it and went to New York to study credit. Settled in the suburbs, rented a house for eighty dollars a month. His second cousin, Daisy, lives in the more convenient East Egg area and is married to wealthy Tom Buchanan. Tom went to Yale with Nick, and even then he didn't like Tom's behavior. Tom cheated on his wife and didn't feel the need to hide from Nick his connection to Myrtle Wilson, whose husband owned a car repair shop and gas station. Daisy, knowing about her husband's infidelities, suffered, it seemed to Nick that she needed to run away from him.
Guests gather at the villa of Nick's neighbor in the evenings, and his car turns into a regular bus, transporting a huge number of people. And on Monday, eight servants and two gardeners clean up the villa all day.
One day, Nick is sent an official invitation to a party by Gatsby, Nick's neighbor. Usually they did not wait for an invitation to him, but they came themselves. There were rumors that Gatsby killed a man, others said that during the war he served the Germans, and someone even said that he was the brother of the devil. Nick meets Gatsby by chance, they started talking, and it turned out that they served in the same regiment, and a little later it turned out that this was the owner of the house and his name was Gatsby. After several meetings, Gatsby asks Nick to do him a favor, which Jordan Baker will describe, Nick met her from his sister. He was asked to invite Daisy to visit him, and Gatsby, allegedly visiting Nick on business, was able to see her. Jordan said that in the fall of 1917, Daisy and the still young Lieutenant Gatsby loved each other. He was sent to Europe, and she married Tom Buchanan. Before the wedding, Daisy gets drunk and throws a pearl necklace - a gift from the groom for three hundred and fifty thousand dollars - into the trash. Holding a letter in one hand and a bottle of alcohol in the other, the girl asked not to marry her, but they brought her to her senses, put on a necklace and the wedding took place.
Gatsby and Daisy met, she saw his house. The parties stopped, Gatsby changed servants, and Daisy began to visit him more often, he also met Tom, who was interested to know where he gets all the money from.
After lunch with Tom and Daisy, Nick, Jordan and Gatsby all go to New York to unwind and it becomes clear to everyone that Tom and Gatsby have entered into a duel for Daisy. Tom, Nick and Jordan are driving Gatsby's Roll-Royce, and he and Desi are driving Tom's Ford. Tom stops by at the gas station to Wilson, and he says that he is going to leave with his wife forever, because he suspects that there is a love affair between her and Tom. Tom understands that he can be left without a wife and without a mistress. In New York, Gatsby told Tom that Daisy had never loved him and now does not love him, she was tired of waiting for him to get better and have money. In response, Tom names the source of Gatsby's income - smuggling of enormous proportions. Daisy is shocked by what she has heard and wants to stay with Tom. Tom realizes that he has won and tells his wife to go with her in Gatsby's car, and everyone else follows them in a Ford. Arriving at the gas station, they saw a crowd of people and Myrtle was knocked down, her husband locked her at home, and she saw Tom and Jordan from the window, mistaking her for Daisy. As they drove back, Myrtle freed herself and ran to the car. There were practically no witnesses to the collision, as it turned out, Daisy was driving the car. Until the very morning, Gatsby sat under Daisy's windows in order to help her in difficult times. Looking out the window, Nick saw the spouses sitting next to each other and they were one, but he did not want to take hope from Gatsby.
At four in the morning, Nick heard the sound of a car pulling up. It was Gatsby who had arrived in a taxi, Nick did not want to leave him alone, and Gatsby wanted to talk about Daisy. This morning he learned from Gatsby the story of his love.
Gatsby's real name is James Goetz. He changed his name at the age of seventeen, after seeing Dan Cody's yacht for the first time, he warned him that a storm was coming. The boy's parents were farmers. He himself invented Jay Gatsby and remained true to his invention. Gatsby knew women early and was spoiled by them, then he began to despise them. He wanted to believe that the world is under the auspices of the fairy, and she is reliably guarding it. When he looked at the high sides of Cody's yacht, it seemed to him that everything that was beautiful in the world was embodied in it. Dan Cody, got rich on silver, which was mined in the mines of Nevada, then he made transactions with oil. Cody took the young man on a yacht, at first he worked as a steward, then as a senior officer, captain, they sailed for five years, but then Dan died. Dan left him an inheritance - twenty-five thousand dollars, but he could not receive them due to legal problems. But Gatsby had the experience that Dan gave him. Daisy was the first girl from society and at the first meeting, it seemed to him that he needed her. He began to visit her house frequently in the company of officers. Then he began to appear himself. He had nothing but a military uniform, which he considered his cloak - invisibility, take off this cloak from him and he will remain only a young man of unknown origin. He had a successful military career, at the end of the war he had already risen to the rank of major and wanted to go home, but due to some misunderstanding he ended up in Oxford, and he had the opportunity to study there for free. Desi sent him a letter in which she wrote that she already wanted to arrange her life, and she no longer had the strength to wait for Gatsby, and then Tom appeared in her life. This is a letter Gatsby received while studying at Oxford.
After the conversation, they say goodbye and Nick, leaving, shouted to him that all around him were insignificant people.
Distraught with grief, Wilson came to that in order to find out whose car crushed his wife. He learns from Tom that the car belongs to Gatsby. He comes to Gatsby, kills him, and then shoots himself. Gatsby's funeral was attended by Nick, Gatsby's father and one of the many guests who flocked to his parties. Nick called Daisy, but was told that the family had left and left no address. Tom and Daisy were careless, why they were still together, it was known only to themselves, they broke and destroyed everything on their way, and someone else had to clean up after them.

Please note that this is only a summary of the literary work "The Great Gatsby". This summary omits many important points and quotations.