Comments on The Great Gatsby

Christina Bonvicin
March 20, 2009
The Great Gatsby

“My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer...writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.”
“Self-interview,” New York Tribune (May 7, 1920)

F. Scott Fitzgerald was writing for his generation when he wrote The Great Gatsby. It was set in the 1920s, the Roaring Twenties, a time which Fitzgerald himself 'grew up' in. He wrote of the heartbreaks and the jealousy and the scandals that rocked New York City during the time. Sure, the characters and such were made up, but New York City and Broadway and Long Island are places you can visit today. The story and situations in the story are fiction, but in fact could be situations that did indeed happen. We could never know. But Fitzgerald was writing for his generation, the "Lost Generation," as it was called, the Jazz Age Fitzgerald himself named it. He was writing for the readers of his time, of the partiers and famous people, people just like the characters in The Great Gatsby.

Reading a little bio, I see that Fitzgerald puts some of his own life into the stories, thus making even more of a generation-appeal, so to speak. The Great Gatsby is considered to be Fitzgerald's greatest masterpiece, and it is continued to be read and taught in schools through the United States, as our class is a perfect example of. And considering that the entire eleventh grade curriculum is the same, that means many other teens are reading The Great Gatsby also, showing that Fitzgerald was a wise writer, for he wrote not only for his generation, but also for the critics of the next, and students and teachers forever after his greatest novel was published.


"That was always my experience—a poor boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy's school; a poor boy in a rich man's club at Princeton…I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works."–F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters

I can see this theme coming through in The Great Gatsby. Though Nick, the narrator, came from a rich family, he didn’t live nearly as rich as Gatsby or the Buchanans did. He was borrowing some of his father’s money to start his own career, since he didn’t want to take over the family business of owning a hardware store in the Mid-West. He wanted to be out east, in New York City and on Long Island. What I can also see is Fitzgerald making Nick and Gatsby both like himself. Or, rather, putting his own life experiences into the main characters of the story. Nick, the narrator, served in the first World War, “the Great War” as he calls it, as did Fitzgerald for a time. Both Fitzgerald and Gatsby went to great colleges, whether they wanted to or not. There are many other experiences that Fitzgerald puts into his characters, such as Gatsby being broke and then having a financial success after the war, such as Fitzgerald did. Though, Gatsby and Fitzgerald probably made their money two different ways. Possibly, you can never be entirely sure with things like that. Anyway, I can really see the “poor boy in rich boy place” theme going throughout the novel, as that is what Nick was, a “poor” man living surrounded by rich people.