The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby was a novel written by an American author named F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 1930s. The Great Gatsby is a novel that deals with the old rich colliding with the new rich, told through a man named Nick’s point of view. In The Great Gatsby, Nick makes friends with Jay Gatsby, who attained his fortune by bootlegging. Bootleggers were people who sold alcohol illegally during the brief ban on alcohol in the United States during the 1930s and led to higher organized crime rates. Jay Gatsby was a class act who was in love with a woman named Daisy, but she was a woman of wealth so Gatsby got rich by any means necessary so he could buy a mansion across from the home Daisy lives in and hopefully attract her with the huge parties he threw. Unknown to Gatsby, Daisy was in an affair with Tom who is Nick’s friend from college. The Great Gatsby was not just written so Americans could read about love affairs, because it focused on many values in the American society. The novel focuses on individualism, pursuit of happiness, and also bad things such as carelessness of the rich.

Individualism is a term used to describe a theoretical or practical emphasis of the individual, instead of focusing on a group of people. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald praises the individual’s success; as seen in Gatsby’s ascension to wealth through his path of selling alcohol. In chapter six, you realize Gatsby’s true past: He is actually a man named James Gatz who dropped out of college and was seduced by wealth. Gatz took his first step at success by reinventing himself into “Jay Gatsby” when he introduced himself to a wealthy man named Dan Cody that took him on a yacht. When Cody died and his mistress prevented Gatsby from inheriting the twenty-five thousand dollars Dan had left behind for him, Gatsby dedicated himself into becoming a wealthy and successful man. Gatsby’s dedication got him into pursuing happiness as he knew it: being wealthy and having the girl of your dreams.

Jay Gatsby pursued happiness in the American dream: He wanted to get rich, be a successful man, and marry a beautiful girl. Through bootlegging and throwing his parties, Gatsby became rich and