The Great Gatsby analysis

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is one of the most influential American novels of the twentieth century because it combines a relatively simple tragic story with a much broader examination of wealth, love, social class, identity, and the American Dream. The novel is set mainly in the summer of 1922, during a period often associated with economic growth, jazz, extravagant parties, changing social behavior, consumer culture, and confidence in personal success. At first glance, the world Fitzgerald describes appears attractive. There are enormous houses, expensive cars, fashionable clothes, music, alcohol, elaborate parties, and people who seem free to enjoy life without limitations. Yet beneath this brilliant surface there is loneliness, selfishness, dishonesty, emotional emptiness, and a deep division between people who possess social privilege and those who only dream of entering that world. Fitzgerald therefore does not simply celebrate the glamour of the 1920s.…