Key themes
- The corruption of the American Dream
- Illusion and the impossibility of recapturing the past
- Class, new money and old
About this book
Wealth, longing and a green light across the bay in the Jazz Age — short, perfect and quietly devastating.
Published in 1925, The Great Gatsby was only a modest success in Fitzgerald's lifetime; its reputation grew enormously after his death and it is now a canonical portrait of 1920s America.
Discussion questions
- Gatsby has reinvented himself entirely in pursuit of a dream. Is he a romantic hero, a con artist, or both — and does the novel want us to decide?
- Nick Carraway is a morally unreliable narrator who admires Gatsby despite acknowledging his dishonesty. What does the choice of Nick as narrator allow Fitzgerald to do?
- The green light at the end of Daisy's dock is one of the novel's central symbols. What does it represent — and by the end, has its meaning changed?
- Tom Buchanan represents 'old money' and casual brutality. The novel is sharply critical of him — but is it equally critical of Gatsby, who aspires to what Tom takes for granted?
- The novel ends with the famous image of boats against the current, 'borne back ceaselessly into the past.' How does this ending reframe everything that has come before?
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Read together or read next
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Often taught together
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This is a set text
The Great Gatsby appears on the following curriculum reading lists.
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