The Great Gatsby

No. It’s short, nine chapters, and you can finish it in a weekend. The sentences are dense with images, so it rewards reading slowly, but nothing about it is difficult.

Not really. Everything you need is on the page: the parties, the money, the cars. If you want more, the book is a better guide to the decade than most histories.

Any complete edition works. The Scribner paperback is the standard text. If you want the original 1925 wording, look for a facsimile of the first edition; some later printings changed a few words, such as “orgastic” to “orgiastic”.

The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and first published in 1925. It remains his most famous and widely read novel.

No. The Great Gatsby is a work of fiction. Fitzgerald drew on the society of the Roaring Twenties and on his own experiences, but the characters and events are invented.

The Great Gatsby follows Nick Carraway, who moves next door to the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby on Long Island in the summer of 1922. Gatsby throws lavish parties in the hope of reuniting with Daisy Buchanan, his former love who is now married to the wealthy Tom Buchanan. As Gatsby tries to recapture the past, the novel exposes the emptiness behind the wealth of the Jazz Age and ends in tragedy.

The novel ends tragically: Gatsby is shot and killed by George Wilson, who wrongly believes Gatsby was driving the car that killed his wife, Myrtle. Daisy and Tom leave town together, almost none of Gatsby’s party guests come to his funeral, and Nick returns to the Midwest.

The Great Gatsby is set on Long Island, New York, in the summer of 1922, mainly in the fictional towns of West Egg and East Egg, with scenes in Manhattan and the Valley of Ashes between Long Island and New York City.

The green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock, across the bay from Gatsby’s mansion, stands for Gatsby’s longing for Daisy and for the future he wants with her. More broadly it stands for the American Dream, and for how impossible it is to recapture the past.

“Old sport” is the term of endearment Jay Gatsby uses for other people, especially Nick Carraway. It sounds refined and slightly put-on, which fits the persona Gatsby has built for himself.

Owl Eyes is a guest at Gatsby’s parties who is found in Gatsby’s library in Chapter 3, astonished that the books are real. He is one of the few people who sees past the surface of the parties, and one of the few who comes to Gatsby’s funeral.

The Valley of Ashes is the grey industrial wasteland between West Egg and New York City. It stands for the moral and social decay behind the pursuit of wealth, in stark contrast to the luxury of East Egg and West Egg.

The narrator is Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota who moves to New York in the summer of 1922 and rents a house next door to Jay Gatsby. He is both a participant in the story and an observer of it.

The Great Gatsby has been challenged and banned at times because of its depictions of adultery, drinking during Prohibition, violence and sexual content. It remains one of the most widely taught novels in American schools.

Jay Gatsby dies. He is shot by George Wilson, who believes Gatsby was driving the car that killed his wife, Myrtle. Myrtle Wilson and George Wilson die as well.

Jordan Baker is a professional golfer and a close friend of Daisy Buchanan. She becomes romantically involved with Nick Carraway. Her cool, detached manner and her dishonesty reflect the carelessness of the wealthy elite that Fitzgerald critiques.

Myrtle Wilson is Tom Buchanan’s mistress and the wife of George Wilson, a garage owner in the Valley of Ashes. She wants to escape her working-class life. She is killed when she is struck by Gatsby’s car, which Daisy is driving.

Klipspringer is a guest who stays at Gatsby’s mansion so often that he is nicknamed “the boarder”. In Chapter 5 he plays the piano when Gatsby shows Daisy and Nick around his house. He stands for the shallow relationships around Gatsby.

In Chapter 5, when Gatsby and Daisy meet again at Nick’s house, Gatsby nearly knocks over the clock on Nick’s mantelpiece. The moment points to Gatsby’s wish to stop or turn back time, and to the impossibility of recapturing the past.

The Great Gatsby has nine chapters.

No. The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald alone. His wife, Zelda Fitzgerald, was a writer in her own right and an important influence on his work, but she is not credited as an author of the novel.

It depends on the edition, but a typical paperback edition is around 180 pages.

The Great Gatsby is fiction, usually classed as an American classic and a modernist novel. It is often studied as a critique of the American Dream during the Jazz Age.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby in the early 1920s, and it was first published on April 10, 1925. The story is set in the summer of 1922.

The main themes are the corruption of the American Dream, the emptiness of wealth, social class and the elusive nature of love. The novel shows the moral decline beneath the glamour of the Jazz Age.

The main character is Jay Gatsby. The story is told by Nick Carraway, who becomes caught up in Gatsby’s world.

Tom Buchanan is usually seen as the antagonist. He represents old money and privilege, in contrast to Gatsby’s new money, and his actions drive the novel’s conflicts and tragedy.

In The Great Gatsby the American Dream is the belief that wealth and reinvention can bring happiness and love. Gatsby reinvents himself and becomes rich to win Daisy back, but the novel shows that dream as illusory, morally costly and ultimately out of reach.

The Great Gatsby is usually associated with modernism. Fitzgerald uses vivid imagery and symbolism, and tells the story through one narrator’s memory, reflecting the disillusionment after the First World War.

Catherine is Myrtle Wilson’s sister. She appears at the apartment in New York that Tom Buchanan keeps for Myrtle. She is a minor character.

The Great Gatsby has been filmed several times. The best-known adaptation, directed by Baz Luhrmann and released in 2013, was shot mainly in and around Sydney, Australia.

Streaming availability changes over time and differs by country, so check Netflix directly. The 2013 film has historically been available to rent or stream on services such as Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.