F. Scott Fitzgerald 
The Great Gatsby 

The Great Gatsby, an American classic of the Jazz Age, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s greatest literary achievement has been praised by readers one generation after another.

The main events are set during the summer of the year 1922 when the narrator, Nick Carraway, rents a modest house in the vicinity of the enigmatic self-made millionaire, Jay Gatsby. In Carraway’s eyes, he is a symbol of prosperity and luxury. Yet in Gatsby’s chase after the ideal love, Daisy Buchanan, we see him crushed under the weight of the ‘American Dream’. Although seemingly attainable, this concept turns out to be empty aspiration.

As Gatsby engages in questionable deals steered by his obsession with Daisy, the reader observes that wealth alone does not make one untouchable nor an established member of the upper class, unless

inherited and accompanied by education and status. Gatsby can be viewed as an imposter, a dreamer, a romantic, or a fool, but he is authentic when compared with the decayed morals of Daisy and Tom Buchanan. As Nick Carraway observes:

‘They’re a rotten crowd, (…) You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.’

A story of unfulfilled love, detachment and aloofness of the rich, as well as Fitzgerald’s personal disappointment with the society he lived in, The Great Gatsby deserves its place in the classic literature hall of fame.