The Great Gatsby
The Plot
Nick Carraway, the narrator, is a young Midwesterner who, having graduated from Yale in 1915 and fought in World War I ("the Great War"), has returned home to begin a career. Like others in his generation, he is restless and has decided to move East to New York and learn the bond business. The novel opens early in the summer of 1922 in West Egg, Long Island, where Nick has rented a house. Next to his place is a huge mansion complete with Gothic tower and marble swimming pool, which belongs to a Mr. Gatsby, whom Nick has not met.
Directly across the bay from West Egg is the more fashionable community of East Egg, where Tom and Daisy Buchanan live. Daisy is Nick's cousin, and Tom, a well-known football player at Yale, had been in the same senior society as Nick in New Haven. Like Nick, they are Midwesterners who have come East to be a part of the glamour and mystery of the New York City area. They invite Nick to dinner at their mansion, and here he meets a young woman golfer named Jordan Baker, a friend of Daisy's from Lousville, whom Daisy wants Nick to become interested in.
During dinner the phone rings, and when Tom and Daisy leave the room, Jordan informs Nick that the caller is a "woman of Tom's from New York."
The woman's name is Myrtle Wilson, and she lives in a strange, fantastic place half way between West Egg and New York City that Fitzgerald calls the "valley of ashes." . . .
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Table of Contents
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| Advisory Board |
v
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| How to Use this Book |
vii
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| THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES |
1
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| THE NOVEL |
11
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| The Plot |
11
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| The Characters |
17
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| Other Elements |
27
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| Setting |
27
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| Themes |
28
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| Style |
31
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| Point of View |
32
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| Form and Structure |
34
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| The Story |
37
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| A STEP BEYOND |
79
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| Tests and Answers |
79
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| Term Paper Ideas |
88
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| Further Reading |
93
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| Critical Works |
93
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| Author's Other Works |
95
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| Glossary |
96
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| The Critics |
99
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