Wealth and social class permeate much of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ and ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’. Set during the roaring twenties when many people had newly accumulated wealth after the war, both texts seek to explore and satirise the complexities of wealth and social class. They particularly focus on how far people may go to fit into a social class […]

The Great Gatsby Study Guide Chapter 1 1. Explain what Fitzgerald achieved by using Nick’s point of view to tell Gatsby’s story? He achieves a wider look at things. 2. What do we learn about Nick Carraway in the introductory section of the novel? He is upper middle class and went to college. 3. In discussing East Egg and West Egg, Nick states, “To the […]

American Illusions in The Great Gatsby The American dream. Every American has his or her own ideals and preferences, but all share more or less the same dream. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald explores what happens when this dream is taken too far. What is one to do when the dream begins to overshadow reality? What are the consequences when a successful man allows the […]

In the novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald there is a definite turning point. The turning point in ‘The Great Gatsby’ happens in Chapter Seven, in the Plaza hotel in New York City. This is when Gatsby’s American Dream starts to crumble around him because Tom has unearthed the truth about Gatsby’s wealth and causes Daisy to run back to Tom. Even though […]

Climax A climax is a decisive moment in a novel that is of maximum intensity or is a major turning point in a plot. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald the major moment of intensity in the novel is when Gatsby finally talks to Daisy for the fist time in years. When they finally reconnect Gatsby feels like it was a “terrible mistake. […]

The communication of this invitation through Gatsby suggests initially to Nick that ‘something was up’. The air tension is increased by Fitzgerald’s use of pathetic fallacy: the weather is “Hot!…Hot!…Hot!” so that it, like the atmosphere in the chapter ‘hovered on the edge of combustion’. It is almost the last day of summer, appropriately. There is a feeling that the last chance for Gatsby; that […]

The Broken American Dream of the 1920s An accurate name for the 1920s is the roaring twenties. This was a decade full of social transformation and industrialization. Through this shift, a degradation in social moral occurred. A victim of this shift is the character J. Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Gatsby is “corrupted by values and attitudes that he holds in common […]

Chapter 2 In chapter two of The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses many methods of narrative. In this essay I will analyse three: Character, Setting and Voice each in detail. In the opening sentence of chapter 2, Fitzgerald uses imagery to create a setting of almost like a limbo with never-ending roads and barren land. This theme continues throughout the first setting in the […]

The beginning of the 20th century was marked with substantial changes including the industrial revolution, WWI and the gradual diversification of moral views as opposed to the uniformity imposed by the clericalism that had dominated the American society from its conception. The dynamically changing morality first and foremost touched the new bourgeoisie, or the class of people who made their fortunes rapidly and became wealthy […]

Individual vs. society Gatsby vs. the American society in 1920s From Nick’s perspective, Gatsby might have made vast fortune by illegal means and is capable of behaving like an aristocrat, he is still not respected as the ‘old money’ from East Egg; Gatsby’s mansion, his shimmering parties, fancy clothes and cars, cannot erase his past as a low-born farmer’s son after all. He dreams to […]