The Great Gatsby was published in 1922 by F. Scott Fitzgerald. At first glance, the novel appears to be a simple love story, but further examination reveals Fitzgerald's masterful scrutiny of American society during the 1920s and the corruption of the American dream.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1926) is, at first sight, a novel about love, idealism and disillusionment. However, it soon reveals its hidden depths and enigmas. What is the significance of the strange "waste land" between West Egg and New York, where Myrtle Wilson meets her death, an alien landscape presided over by the eyes of T J Eckleburg whose eyes, like God's, "see everything"? And what are we to make of the novel's unobtrusive symbolism (the green light, the colour of American dollar bills, which burns at the end of Daisy's dock, the references to the elements - land, sea and earth - over which Gatby claims mastery, the contrast between "East" and "West"), or its subtle use of the personalised first narrator, the unassuming Nick Carraway?
It is a novel which has intrigued and fascinated readers. Clearly, as a self-proclaimed "tale of the West", it is exploring questions about America and what it means to be American. In this sense Gatsby is perhaps that legendary opus, the "Great American Novel", following in the footsteps of works such as Moby Dick and Huckleberry Finn.