The Great Gatsby- American Literature.

1. The Great
Gatsby
Dario Atencio
8-902-1137

2. Why It Took So Long For “The Great Gatsby” to
Be Considered A Literary Classic?
When it was published in 1925, Gatsby sold a disappointing 21,000
copies, less than half of sales for “This Side of Paradise’’ and “The
Beautiful and Dammed”, Mr. Fitzgerald's first two novels. And there were
reportedly still copies from the second printing in the Scribner warehouse
when Fitzgerald died in 1940.
It wouldn’t be until the 1950’s that Fitzgerald was crowned one of the
greatest writers of his generations; and by the 1960’s, Gatsby had
became practically a standard text in the curriculum in many high schools
and colleges with a vast majority of university surveys praising it as one of
the greatest novels of all time.

3. Time
Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of
decayed social and moral values, evidenced in
its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty
pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that
led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—
epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent
parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday
night—resulted ultimately in the corruption of the
American dream, as the unrestrained desire for
money and pleasure surpassed more noble
goals.

4. Nick intends to become a bond salesman, a line of
work he says that almost everyone he knew was
entering. Nick hopes to find a taste of the
excitement and sense of possibility that was
sweeping the nation in the early 1920s. He says
moving to New York offered him and everyone else
the chance to discover or reinvent themselves.
AMBITION

5. Youth and love
● The Great Gatsby is not a tale about perfect
love; it is a tale of love and lust corrupting
individuals in their lives, and of an American
dream that is never fulfilled. Throughout the
story, we follow multiple relationships, but
focus is on the single relationship between
Gatsby and Daisy.
● This relationship, however, fails to fulfill
many requirements that would make it a
true love story, and thus, while some
hardship is to be expected, this relationship
encounters an excessive amount.

6. THEMES
The Decline of the American Dream in
the 1920s
The Hollowness of the Upper Class
Class
The American Dream
Love and Marriage

7. The Decline of the American Dream in
the 1920s
When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young
Americans who had fought the war became intensely
disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made
the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America
seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy.
In the 1920s depicted in the novel, however, easy money and
relaxed social values have corrupted this dream, especially on
the East Coast.
Gatsby instills Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that she
neither deserves nor possesses. Gatsby’s dream is ruined by the
unworthiness of its object, just as the American dream in the
1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of its object—money and
pleasure.

8. The Hollowness of the Upper Class
In the novel, West Egg and its denizens represent the newly rich, while East
Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom, represent the old
aristocracy.
What the old aristocracy possesses in taste, however, it seems to lack in
heart, as the East Eggers prove themselves careless, inconsiderate bullies
who are so used to money’s ability to ease their minds that they never
worry about hurting others.
Gatsby, for example, lives in a monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink
suit, drives a Rolls-Royce, and does not pick up on subtle social signals.

9. CLASS
“I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to
lick my shoe.”
In the end of the book, class dynamics dictate which marriage
survives (Tom and Daisy), which one is destroyed (George and
Myrtle), and which one will never come to be (Gatsby and Daisy).
Only the most affluent couple pulls through the events that
conclude the book.
Because of their elite class status, Tom and Daisy share a belief
that they are immune to the consequences of their actions.

10. The American Dream
Every character in The Great Gatsby draws
inspiration from the American Dream’s promise of
wealth and prosperity.
Gatsby suffers the most from the promise of social
mobility inherent to the American Dream.
Gatsby’s failure to attain the American Dream
suggests the Dream is both an unattainable and
unwise goal.

11. Love and Marriage
The marriages seem to be unions of convenience or
advantage than actual love.
Daisy nearly backed out of her marriage to Tom the day
before her wedding, and Tom had an affair within a year
of the wedding.
“I wasn’t actually in love,” Nick recalls, “but I felt a sort
of tender curiosity.”

12. THANK
YOU!

13. CURIOSITY