Notes on The Great Gatsby

The Lost Generation

Coined by Gertrude Stein, referring to young people disoriented after World War I.
Ernest Hemingway popularized the term in The Sun Also Rises.
Included American expatriate writers in Paris during the 1920s, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Ezra Pound, and Hemingway.
Characterized by restlessness, cynicism, and a search for meaning in love, writing, and hedonism.

Fitzgerald was seduced by the "Jazz Age" but aware of its moral defects and empty promises.
The Great Gatsby is a personal story of love and a critique of the failed American Dream.

Before 1920: "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" explores tensions between traditional and liberated feminine values.
1922: T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land prefigures Lost Generation themes of cultural disintegration and loss of spiritual meaning.
After 1926: Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises delves into love, death, and masculinity.
1930-36: John Dos Passos explores the American Dream through 12 characters in his U.S.A. trilogy.

Fitzgerald saw the Jazz Age as a time of miracle and excess.
Post-war prosperity centered on Wall Street, with fortunes made in stocks and bonds.
The self-made man was an ideal challenging old money and social snobbery.
New social mobility appeared to heal class wounds.
Wealth for some led to the impoverishment of others, creating a morally empty culture.
Fakery and snobbery persisted with new targets.
Bootlegging arose after the 18th Amendment (Prohibition), with illegal liquor sold in speakeasies.
Tom Buchanan expresses racist views in the novel.

Fitzgerald aimed for a "sincere and yet radiant world" in his novel, reflected in his romantic prose style.
Jay Gatsby's mansion in West Egg symbolizes his aspirations.
Gatsby's background is mysterious, with rumors of criminal activity.
His extravagant parties are filled with revelry but also drunkenness and insincerity.
Nick Carraway learns that Gatsby is obsessed with Daisy Buchanan, who is married to Tom.
Gatsby's wealth, acquired through shady dealings with Meyer Wolfshiem, is intended to win back Daisy.

White dresses worn by Jordan and Daisy suggest a false innocence.
Colors are symbolic: Gatsby's pink suit and yellow Rolls-Royce represent his need to impress.
Green is a prevalent symbol, representing Daisy's dock light and the elusive future.
Nick envisions the "fresh, green breast of the new world," connecting individual and national destiny.

Fitzgerald wanted to create something "extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned."
The book received mixed reviews and sold poorly initially.
Fitzgerald felt like a failure at the time of his death.
The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night are now considered significant US novels.
The Great Gatsby is admired for its exposure of a flawed society, prose, dialogue, and structure.
The novel transcends its time due to its relevance to modern issues like celebrity culture and corporate greed.
Its aesthetic mastery makes it timeless.