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Jay Gatsby Background

Decent Essays

When reading The Great Gatsby, the mystery of Jay Gatsby’s history is intriguing. Upon completion of the novel and research of Francis Scott Fitzgerald, it is evident that the author’s own life impacted the background of Gatsby himself. After research, the mysteriousness behind Gatsby’s history and past relationships may not be so arbitrary after all; they come directly from experiences of the author.
“‘I am the son of some wealthy people in the middle-west--all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years’” (Fitzgerald 69). As Gatsby elaborates on his past to Nick, he proceeds to emphasize the social struggle during the time. It is then made clear later in the novel that James Gatz, at the age of seventeen, was actually “beating his way along the south shore of Lake Superior as a clam digger and a salmon fisher or in any other capacity that brought him food and bed” (Fitzgerald 104). Fitzgerald grew up in the Midwest, and grew up less-wealthy than his neighbors in the wealthy …show more content…

As reflected by Gatsby in the novel, “‘Then came war old sport. It was a great relief and I tried very hard to die but I seemed to bear an enchanted life… I was promoted to be a major and every Allied government gave me a decoration-even Montenegro, little Montenegro down on the Adriatic Sea!”’ (Fitzgerald 70). Again, Gatsby appears to mimic the dreams of Fitzgerald himself. Fitzgerald believed he would die in war, which is expressed through Gatsby indirectly by the phrase “he hoped to die in war” (Fitzgerald 70). In June of 1918, Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan, where he fell in love (Bruccoli). The war then ended just before he was sent overseas, so he returned to New York in order to seek out a fortune to marry as his fiance broke the engagement

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