SCOTT FITZGERALD BIOGRAPHY

He was born in 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota in the U.S. and he died in 1940 in Hollywood, California. His full name was Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. He was an american short-story writer.

He wrote about Jazz Age, the lifestyle of the americans in 1920s. He was mainly famous for his novel “ The Great Gatsby ”, where he described the society of the time when he wrote it, 1925.

He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned,The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel,The Last Tycoon, was published when he was died. Fitzgerald is also author of four collections of short stories, and 164 short stories in magazines during his lifetime. Fitzgerald was a student at Princeton University and he joined the U.S. Army. Fitzgerald made several excursions to Europe, mostly Paris and the French Riviera, and became friend of Ernest Hemingway . The success of his first novel, “This Side of Paradise” (1920), made him an instant celebrity. His third novel, “The Great Gatsby” (1925), was highly regarded, but “Tender is the Night” (1934) was considered a disappointment. He became an alcoholic and his wife had a mental illness. He died when he was 44, before completing his final novel, “The Last Tycoon” (1941), but he earned posthumous acclaim as one of America’s most celebrated writer.

THE GREAT GATSBY

First of all I liked that The Great Gatsby was told by Nick Carraway, who was Gatsby's neighbor. Because this narrator , that works as a bond trader in Manhattan and rents a small house in West Egg, a new rich town in Long Island, teach us a romantic idea about Gatsby and his life.

In my opinion, this novel offers a variety of themes: justice, power, greed, betrayal, the American dream. All the characters in The Great Gatsby decribe American life in the 1920s. So the author divides people into different groups but, at the end, each group has its own problems to control its powerful or even its place in the world. The different social classes are old money, new money, and no money men and women.

The old money people live in East Egg: Daisy Buchanan, her husband Tom, and their friend Jordan Baker.

In the other side we can see that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson. Myrtle is married to George Wilson, who runs a gas station in a dirty neighborhood in Queens. Fitzgerald teaches us the elitism running throughout the society. The 1920s marked a time of great post-war economic growth, and Fitzgerald captures the frenzy of the society well.

However the new rich people is represented by Gatsby, a very rich man who lives in a big mansion.

In my personal opinion, The novel begins as a description of the twenties lifestyle and finishes as a love story with unhappy end. Nick finds out that Gatsby and Daisy were in love five years ago, and that Gatsby would like to see her again because Gatsby is deeply in love with her.

I think we must ask to ourselves: who is better or worse? For example, Tom sees that Gatsby’s money comes from crime and learns that Gatsby was born into a poor family and Tom reveals that Gatsby is probably engaged in criminal activities .

Or what can we think when Daisy and Gatsby want to tell Tom that she is leaving him and Gatsby demands that Daisy renounce Tom entirely, and says that she has never loved him? But What about the paper of Daisy when, at the end, she has chosen to stay with Tom?

Is Gatsby a good lover or is he only a poor criminal that has to pay with his life? The end of the story begins one evening, when Daisy and Gatsby drive home in his car . When they drive by the Wilson gas station, Myrtle runs out to the car because she thinks it’s Tom . Daisy hits and kills her.Tom tells George Wilson, Myrtle`s husband, that the car belongs to Gatsby, and George decides to shoot and kill Gatsby, and then himself. So I wonder again: who is better or worse person?

I thought the novel was a kind of romantic story which represents Gatsby’s love to Daisy, but at the end I thought it is mainly showing us the friendship between Nick and Gatsby. For example, Nick tries to find people to come to Gatsby’s funeral, but everyone who pretended to be Gatsby’s friend and came to his parties now refuses to come.