"The Great Gatsby": a summary of the novel and its main idea

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The novel "The Great Gatsby", written in the spring of 1925, is really great. He did not bring fame to his author Francis Scott Fitzgerald during his lifetime.

Only thirty years later, in the 60s of the last century, the recognition of a classic came: according to the US school curriculum, you need to know the summary of The Great Gatsby. This is a "very American" book: a novel-idea, a novel-thought. Why did he "succeed"? Firstly, some features of Gatsby are characteristic of Francis Scott himself: earned we alth, social life, dreams, flight of thought, unhappy love for his dissolute, later gone mad, beautiful wife Zelda Sayre, which led the writer to a stroke and death. Secondly, the author wrote about his generation in the same way as Pasternak, Sholokhov, as Pelevin writes now.

Truly gaining an understanding of The Great Gatsby is of little help. Open the end of the novel - here is its leitmotif. In one of the last paragraphs, Fitzgerald mentions a 17th-century romantic sailing ship rushing from the distant shores of Europe to the coast of Long Island (later the residence of Gatsby), the shining eyes of a Dutch sailor, “the secrecybreath" from the beauty of the environment and "the ability to admire." That's just such a person, as if torn out by a time machine from that same Dutch sailboat, Scott Fitzgerald "thrown" in the 20s of the last century. Could it be connected with this leitmotif that 17-year-old James Goetz, impressed by the yacht of millionaire Dan Cody, came up with a new name for himself, Jay Gatsby? He remains true to the end of the name, born of youthful fantasy.

When you open the book, you will understand why the Great Gatsby is considered a household name in the United States. The summary of the book is the story of Lieutenant Gatsby's acquaintance with the rich girl Daisy, Nick Carraway's second cousin, and his feelings for her. He went to the front, she married the millionaire Tom Buchanan. Even the fact that young Daisy, on the eve of the wedding, threw away her future husband's gift - a fifty-thousandth pearl necklace - and got drunk "in the smoke" did not avert the wedding. However, two principles have always fought in it: the understanding of benefits and the desire for happiness. But if the girl was protected by we alth, then the Great Gatsby was in the warring army. A brief summary of his subsequent biography: the rank of major, scorched by the fire of the First World War, studying at Oxford. The young man understood that his beloved belonged to a different class, filled to the brim with luxury, life, so he strove to become rich by any means, even through the underground trade in alcohol, violating the "dry law" (bootlegging).

But it all happens behind the scenes. The novel shows him having already bought a residence in a resort suburb of New York, not far from the Buchanan mansion. The Great Gatsby chose the anonymous tactic of entering the world and contacting Daisy. The summary is as follows: organizing one after another endless noisy foam parties, in the end he wanted to invite Desi as well. He succeeded in his plan, she responded to his call, she was even ready to terminate her marriage. But Tom Buchanan, the husband, took Gatsby's naive explanation at the Plaza Hotel that Daisy would leave him as a call to action. He found out about the illegality of the income of the protagonist of the novel, told his wife about it. She chose to live with her husband, even knowing about his betrayal with his mistress. The Great Gatsby paid dearly for trying to "break into the high society". The brief content further acquires the features of fatality and tragedy. Tom Buchanan had an opportunity that he did not miss: Daisy, while driving Jay's car, hit Myrtle, George Wilson's wife, to death, then, frightened, left. When the inconsolable husband came to question him, Buchanan pointed to Jay. George Wilson shot the Great Gatsby while relaxing at his residence, and then committed suicide.

What did Fitzgerald want to say with this novel to his countrymen? He probably tried to "shake" the negative balance between dream, admiration, passion and commercialism, pragmatism.