The Great Gatsby

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on 24 September 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota in the Mid-

West of America. At the time of his birth America was changing into a country of growing cities and technological changes were happening. He was educated at Princeton University but he was a very poor student and never finished his degree.

At University he was with many young men from wealthy backgrounds. The newly-rich commercial classes of America preferred to send their children to East Coast Universities. Although his family wasn’t poor, in the company of such men he felt poor and he was influenced by the rich for the rest of his life. The reason he was such a bad student was because of his interest in literature. He read and wrote very much at the University and had little time left for studying.

After leaving University he joined the Army but although America had joined the First World War he never fought in Europe. While in the army he met Zelda Sayre and they got engaged. After he left the army he worked as an advertising agent and tried to get his first novel published. The novel was rejected and Zelda broke off their engagement too because she felt she couldn’t live with a man with such a small income. So Fitzgerald quit

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He graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century before he participated in the Great War. Nick was with them that tragic day and he observed their row and saw, too, Myrtle’s death and was with Gatsby when the latter stood underneath Daisy’s window in a rather naļve attempt to protect her against Tom’s wrath. “He knew women early, and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant, of the others because they were hysterical about things which in his overwhelming self-absorption he took for granted”.

Jay Gatsby’s real name was James Gatz and his parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people from North Dakota. I think the key word in Gatsby’s description is loneliness. Nick thought that Gatsby “represented everything for which he had an unaffected scorn” and he was annoyed with all the mysteriousness. He inherited 25 000 dollars from Cody but he never got the money and all he was left with was “his singularly appropriate education”. Throughout the book that is the image we usually get of him, standing alone watching the world from afar. Nick could see that Gatsby’s love was one-sided and that Daisy belonged with Tom who was very much like her which was proved after the accident in which Myrtle Wilson was killed but he also saw that Gatsby was so wrapped up in his dreams that he’d never be able to understand. They made homes in America and the fashionable places and resorts of Europe. Olaf’s in southern Minnesota but soon he returned to Lake Superior again. He let his dreams take control of the situation, he believed too much in them and that led him to his tragic death. He recognized his own failings and wasted promise and they, along with Zelda’s mental problems, were the basis of his next and last finished novel “Tender is the Night” published in 1934. His father agreed to finance him for a year.

Approximate Word count = 2515
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)

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