The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
“A devastating critique of the American Dream, written by a man who lived it and lost everything.”
About F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was living the Jazz Age lifestyle he was critiquing. Born middle-class in St. Paul, Minnesota, he attended Princeton among the wealthy, dropped out to join the Army, and fell in love with Zelda Sayre — a Southern belle who initially rejected him because he wasn't rich enough. After his first novel made him famous, they married and became the golden couple of the 1920s — legendary parties, legendary spending, legendary unhappiness. He wrote Gatsby in France, looking back at America with the clarity of distance. The novel sold poorly. He died broke in Hollywood at 44, believing himself a failure.
Life → Text Connections
How F. Scott Fitzgerald's real experiences shaped specific elements of The Great Gatsby.
Fitzgerald grew up middle-class in St. Paul, went to Princeton among the wealthy but couldn't afford to keep up
Nick Carraway's Midwest origins and outsider perspective at East/West Egg
The observer-from-outside position is autobiographical. Nick's moral discomfort with wealth IS Fitzgerald's.
Zelda initially rejected Fitzgerald because he wasn't rich enough; she married him only after This Side of Paradise made him famous
Daisy choosing Tom over young Gatsby because of established wealth, then wavering when Gatsby has money
The central romance is drawn from real heartbreak. Fitzgerald knew what it felt like to be rejected for not being rich.
Fitzgerald made money from short stories but spent lavishly on a lifestyle he couldn't sustain
The tension between new money (Gatsby) and old money (Tom) — and how both destroy
Fitzgerald understood both sides of the wealth divide. He wanted the dream and saw through it simultaneously.
He wrote Gatsby while living in the French Riviera, geographically removed from America
The novel's ability to see America clearly — the Dream, the corruption, the beauty — as only an outsider can
Distance gave Fitzgerald perspective. The novel is a love letter and a eulogy at the same time.
Historical Era
1920s America — Prohibition, Jazz Age, post-WWI boom
How the Era Shapes the Book
Prohibition created the exact conditions for Gatsby's rise — illegal alcohol as the engine of new wealth. The post-war disillusionment drives Nick's moral exhaustion. The racial anxieties (Tom's white supremacist rants citing 'The Rise of the Colored Empires') reflect real 1920s nativism and eugenics movements that were mainstream, not fringe.