The Great Gatsby is an American novel. It is a ripping and incendiary tale about the single minded pursuit of a love interest and the stoic determination to renew the strands of an existence interrupted by misfortune, loss, war or in equal social position. Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire, pursues Daisy Buchanan, his love-mate, idol of his youth and of his poverty after a gap of 5 years during which she has been wedded to Tom Buchanan and become the mother of his child. Her life of idleness, dissipation, insipid romance is emblazoned by the advent of her former lover Jay Gatsby.
The story is narrated through Nick Caraway, a mutual friend of the two families, who himself is an admirer of Jordan Baker, a friend of Daisy. Jordan’s characterization is a contrast to Daisy. While Daisy is effervescent, rich, mercurial and ruffled, Jordan is cool, restrained, steady and calculating.
Daisy doesn’t know what to expect from life. She doesn’t know what to expect from her husband or Jay Gatsby. She is expectant and neurotic, unable to come to terms with the swift tide that is engulfing her life in the form of Gatsby but at the same time leaning back on to her solid, self-centered, unfaithful husband Tom. In an unfortunate turn of events Myrtle Wilson Tom’s mistress is run over by a car being driven by Daisy and Gatsby.
The Great Gatsby is an American novel or more precisely the New York novel, about how the Big-Apple beckons, makes or breaks fortunes, the Long-Island and the sea, clouding all peoples’ emotion. The great multitude who come and go in suits and tuxedos, where life is one big party after another and cocktails and champagne that flow to the tunes of pianos, concerts, cinemas, fashions and gossip.
Gatsby throws one huge party after another only to attract the attention of his neighbors, The Buchanans. After the tragic accident Wilson, Myrtle’s husband hunts down the yellow car that caused the accident and in the shootout Gatsby and Wilson are both dead.
Caraway makes arrangements for the funeral and the world that had feasted on this man ‘Gatsby’s’ parties shows no interest in his last rites. Nick and Gatsby’s father are left to perform the ceremony.
F.Scott Fitzgerald’s novel is a classic. He ends by saying people like Gatsby are always surging ahead, valiantly to snatch the future that forever eludes them and being very near they are yet very far, forever shrinking into the past. Daisy and Tom are careless and irresponsible; they can only trample and stifle and leave only a mess for other people to clear.