Annotated Bibliography On The Great Gatsby

According to Harold Bloom; “It is reasonable to assert that Jay Gatsby was the major literary character of the United States in the twentieth century” (Bloom 233). Bloom, being an American literary critic and professor at Yale University, makes an accurate statement as The Great Gatsby is an accurate depiction of the time in which it is placed. The novel takes place during the early 1920s, a time that was later referred to as “the roaring twenties.” Written by Scott F. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby is a story told from the perspective of Nick Carraway, an outsider entering Long Island ‒ at the time, a place of social change and economic booming. Nick tells the stories of his relationships with old classmates, family and new friends and offers

This is seen through the characters: Jay Gatsby, Myrtle Wilson and Daisy Buchanan. Starting with Gatsby, his main goal in life is to be with Daisy. He does not come from money as Daisy has so he spends his life working, mostly on the shady side of the law, to achieve her level of class. When gathered together, Nick (the narrator), Tom(Daisy’s husband), and Daisy talk about Gatsby and how he has come to live in West Egg ‒ just across the bay from them. Tom demands “Who is this Gatsby anyhow?” and he continued by asking “Some big bootlegger?” Then Nick asks him “Where’d you hear that?” and he responds “I didn’t hear it. I imagined it. A lot of these newly rich people are just big bootleggers, you know.’”(Fitzgerald 109). Gatsby's delusional mind has built Daisy up and put her on a pedestal. He thinks that if he can get Daisy, he as new money, he will be accepted into the Old money, East Egg, society. Gatsby invests in his illusions of the American dream, and thus discovers its projected goodness in the frauds of its crippled world. Similarly to Gatsby, Myrtle Wilson uses her not-so-secret romance with Tom Buchanan as a means of upping her level of class. When Myrtle is talking about the first time she met Tom, she says “I was going up to New York to see my sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes and I couldn't keep my eyes off him but every time he looked at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head. When we came into the station he was next to me and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm--and so I told him I'd have to call a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into a taxi with him I didn't hardly know I wasn't getting into a subway train” (Fitzgerald 36). You can tell by the way she speaks about him, she was