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Schule > Englisch > Referat: The great Gatsby

01.01.05

The great Gatsby, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald Carolin Görner
F.S.K. Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota. His private life with his wife, Zelda,
in both America and France became almost as famous as his novels. The dominant influences on Fitzgerald were
aspiration, literature, his studies in Princeton, his family and alcohol. He died of a heart attack on December 21,
1940, in Hollywood.

The story:
Nick Carraway moves from the Mid-West of the United States to New York to work as a stock broker. He finds
a small house on Long Island, an expensive area where rich people live. Next to his home lays the big mansion
of Jay Gatsby. Opposite the bay Nick's cousin Daisy lives with her husband Tom Buchanan. Tom is having a
mistress, Myrtle, and he isn't making a big secret out of it. Jay Gatsby seems to be a big mystery so that
everybody tells different stories about him. Although he gives big parties every weekend.
One day Nick is invited to one of these and there he meets Gatsby the first time. They became good friends and
Gatsby tells Nick that he wants to meet Daisy. So Nick arranges a meeting between them. It turns out that they
have had an affair five years ago but Gatsby didn’t have enough money to marry and besides he had to go to war
so Daisy married Tom. When Gatsby heard that, he started to believe that becoming as rich as possible would
bring him Daisy back. It all ends in a big tragedy when Daisy and Gatsby drive home from New York.
Myrtle Wilson throws herself in front of the car and dies. The husband of Myrtle, Wilson, wants to take revenge for the death of his wife. Wilson, who only knows the colour of the car, begins to search the whole neighbourhood for it and its owner. Finally he finds the car in Gatsby’s garage and kills him and then himself. Afterwards the reader get to know that Tom has given him the information about the driver without knowing that Daisy was the “real” driver. Although Gatsby had many parties with hundreds of guests nobody comes to his burial but Nick, his only friend and Gatsby’s father. Even Daisy hasn’t written a letter nor does she come, she has left New York with her husband.

The characters
Nick Carraway is the main character and the narrator of this novel. He is a pretty solid young man who has graduated from Yale university. He both admires Gatsby and disapproves of him and he is the only person that understands Gatsby although he wants to keep a distance to the rich people who come together in Gatsby’s house. In his eyes they are all superficial and amoral. At the end he is also the only friend of him. Also he is honest, understanding, tolerant and represents the author in many ways.
Jack Gatsby is very mysterious at the beginning because nobody really knows him. His real name is James Gatz and he comes from North Dakota. He worked for a millionaire who gave him the possibility to achieve s fortune. Many years ago he fell in love with Daisy, Nick’s cousin. He wanted to marry her but he was on a much lower social level. Daisy decided to marry Tom. All his later life was determined by the wish to get Daisy back. He got his fortune through criminal activities which he considered necessary to impress Daisy. He is very optimistic and works hard and has great power to transform his dreams into reality.
Tom Buchanan is Daisy’s husband. He easily becomes aggressive, is very athletic and good looking. He is very dominating and superficial. It’s normal for him to have a love affair but he goes mad when he suspects Daisy and Gatsby of having an affair.
He plays a big and tragic role in the end of the novel when he tells Wilson about the accident.
Daisy Buchanan is Nick’s cousin and the woman Gatsby loves. She fell in love with Gatsby when he was an officer in Louisville. She promised to wait for him but then she decided to marry Tom Buchanan, obviously for financial reasons. They both live across of Gatsby’s mansion in East Egg. Daisy is not happy in her marriage she describes Tom as a “brute” of a man. She knows about her husband’s love-affairs and tries to hide her pain. She is intelligent, beautiful and belongs to the high-society.
Jordan Baker is the best friend of Daisy’s. She represents the modern woman who is sportive, independent, rich.
She is very successful and beautiful and Nick loves her. She is also corrupt and amoral.

Interpretation:
This novel is about the turn of the American Dream in the 1920’s and the superficiality of rich people. The author also treats the conflict between upper-class ( Gatsby, Tom and Daisy) and working-class people ( Myrtle and George), and the sudden destruction of dreams. F.S. Fitzgerald conveys that rich people are not able to love, feelings are unimportant for their relationships. He shows the problems of young, talented, ambitious people in a fast-moving consumer society. An exception is the friendship between Gatsby and Nick. . But Jay Gatsby is an impostor, because of his criminal past he becomes guilty. His parties have only one reason, to arrange a meeting with Daisy. His dream is a life with Daisy and his love for her. On the one hand Gatsby is heroic, but on the other he is trivial and common. The best example for this superficiality is Tom. Daisy’s husband represents the brutality and moral carelessness of the established rich. He has no scruples.
The 1920’s were a period when the old values made to the dream had been corrupted by the vulgar pursuit of wealth. The characters are Midwesterners who have come East in pursuit of this new dream for money, fame, success, glamour, and excitement. For example Tom and Daisy with their huge house, a stable of polo ponies, and friends in Europe and Gatsby with his enormous mansion before he can feel confident enough to try to win Daisy. Fitzgerald didn’t criticize the American Dream itself. He criticized the corruption and the consequences of this ideal. In the novel the two classes get in contact because of the relationship between Myrtle and Tom. They are speaking a different kind of English. Their brutality is physical (George kills Gatsby), while the upper class uses psychological brutality (Tom hates Gatsby too, but he uses George to kill him).

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