Key Themes In The Great Gatsby

    Nick Carraway had just moved from the Middle East into a part of New York called West Egg where people of new wealth lived and he had his cousin Daisy who lived in the East Egg with her husband Tom Buchanan which is where people of old money lived. Near where Nick lives is also  where Gatsby's mansion is located. In the beginning Nick always notices that Gatsby would

Nick longs to live the life of a millionaire, but for now the most he is able to do is to live next to one who represents his ideal life. Nick’s ideal world is one of money, and to him, Gatsby represents the life in which he thinks he would like to live. Nick demonstrates his admiration for Gatsby and his wish to be able to live that life when he says, “there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life” bespeaking that Nick finds the wealthy to be “gorgeous” and that he represents everything Nick finds to be the ideal life. Nick finds wealth to be something fantastical and it is something he strives to attain for himself in order for him to live his ideal life. Nick believes himself to be in the pursuit of the ideal life in his new home in West Egg, and that to be wealthy is a life of ease in which there is little struggle, the ideal life.

I’m too poor” (19). Moreover, if Nick is a member of the establish rich, then why is he working for his money and why was he staying in a “weather beaten old cardboard bungalow” (4) that he shared with a complete stranger?

Gatsby has many issues of repeating his past instead of living in the present. A common

At the onset of this book, the reader is introduced to the narrator, Nick Carraway, who relates the past happenings that construct the story of Jay Gatsby and Nick during the summer of 1922. After fighting in World War I, or the Great War as Nick called it, Nick left his prominent family in the West of America for the North where he intended to learn the bond business. Nick was originally supposed to share a house in West Egg near New York City with an associate of his, but the man backed out and so Nick lived with only a Finnish cook. Right next door, Gatsby lived in a glorious mansion with expansive gardens and a marble swimming pool, among other luxuries. Yet Nick did not even hear about Gatsby until he went to visit his

The first way Gatsby shows that he cares about his reputation is through his parties he throws. Every weekend, Gatsby throws a huge party and invites many people. His parties are typically very extravagant and high end, and he spends a fair amount of time preparing for them. “Nick is eventually invited to a party at Gatsby’s mansion and he attends… He is surprised by how crowded it is” (Weisbrod 98). One thing that especially stood out to Nick was the massive amount of people attending the party along with him. This shows that Gatsby’s mansion is typically filled with people when he is throwing parties. Nick is not only shocked at the amount of people at the party, he also is surprised that he was invited in the first place,

Chapter 4 starts off with Nick providing a list of all the guests who attended Gatsby’s parties in the summer and the irony is that none of them actually knew him. When Nick accompanies Gatsby on a trip into the city for lunch, he reveals the truth about his past. Gatsby states that he is from a wealthy family from the Midwest town of San Francisco, he graduated from Oxford, and declared himself a hero in the war. During lunch, Gatsby introduces Nick to his former business partner, Meyer Wolfsheim who apparently fixed the 1919 World Series. Based on the conversation, Nick begins to think that Gatsby is involved in an organized crime. When they leave the restaurant, they come across Tom Buchanan and as Nick introduces Gatsby to him, Gatsby becomes

The story is told by narrator, Nick Carraway who has moved to West Egg, a district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by people who have become rich quickly and show off their wealth but have no social connections.

This shows that Gatsby seems to strangely disappear from Nick’s view, and with Nick unaware of who Jay Gatsby legitimately, this gives the character an aura of mystery. Gatsby is a mysterious unique character that many people seem to guess who his true identity is, for example when Nick and Jordan attend on of Gatsby’s great parties Nick begins to ask Jordan questions about Gatsby “‘where is he from, I mean? And what does he do?’ ‘Now you’re started on the subject”” (Fitzgerald 53). This shows that nobody fully understands who Gatsby truly is, and that although many people participate at his parties, no one really knows who the host actually is, making Jay Gatsby mysterious as ever.

Nick’s summer in the East egg is and educational experience. He learns about Tom’s affair with Myrtle and how abusive tome is- breaking Myrtle’s nose because she wants him to leave his wife. Nick about Tom and Myrtle “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (P 188). Now it’s true the education he came East Egg for was to learn about the bond business. The timing was great. It was 1992 and the economy was great. The 1920’s a happy extravagant time. Unfortunately Nick learned more about the business of the newly rich in East Egg. He discovers that Gatsby’s car was involved in an accident in which Myrtle Wilson was killed.

Nick is carried away (pun intended) by the fun, fast-paced lifestyle of the rich and powerful in New York City. He is going along with the lavish lifestyle that his friends are providing him. Nick is building dreams with the perception of what his friends are providing him, a name, a reputation. Nick thought that wealth was a great thing to have until after he had found out about the fatal car crash that killed Myrtle Wilson. Nick realized that night after the car crash that wealth corrupts people. The wealthy hide behind their status and money believing that they are untouchable, this belief makes them think that there are no

Gatsby most likely has a very small friend group, and everyone else comes and goes, most likely using him for his money and parties. This shows his role as only a host, not a friend, which is what he seemed to be for most people. He seems to only be known for being rich and throwing prodigious parties rather than who he is or what he has done as a person. Most people don't even know him at all.

In the beginning of this novel, Nick caraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but not fashionable area populated by rich people. Nick is unlike all the other people in West Egg, he was educated at Yale and has social connections in East Egg. Nick’s next door neighbor in West Egg is a strange man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a huge Gothic mansion and throws parties every Saturday night.

Afterwards, Nick meets his next-door neighbor, Jay Gatsby, a very rich man who lives in a giant mansion and throws wildly extravagant parties every weekend, and who is a mysterious person no one knows much about.

Nick introduces the setting in Chapter 1. It is 1922, 3 years after the World War I and Nick is a bond man who lives in West Egg in New York which he describes to be the “less fashionable of the two (West and East Egg).”(P.3) He lives in a small home in the West Egg surrounded by millionaires. However, he carries the name Carraway, which means that he is from a wealthy family. He sees Gatsby who lives next to him in lavish mansion in the end of the chapter and is almost fascinated by Gatsby because of his presence and apparent wealth. Then in Chapter 2, Nick meets up with Tom Buchanan who is married his cousin once removed. Nick travels to the city with Tom and Tom introduces him to his mistress, Myrtle who is married to a working class man. They head to an apartment where Nick finds out that Tom has lied to Myrtle about his relationship with Daisy because he doesn't want to divorce Daisy even though he is having an affair with Myrtle. When they start getting in an argument about whether Myrtle has the right to mention Daisy’s name, Tom punches and breaks her nose. (p.37) This scene is the first time the theme of difference in social class is shown, where Tom is reluctant to marry Myrtle and thinks she doesn’t have the right to refer to his wife because the difference in their social classes, even though they are having an affair. Even at this time, when the American Dream was ‘alive’, there were still apparent clashes between different socioeconomic classes, which