F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in St. Paul,
Minnesota. Educated at St. Paul Academy, Newman School, New Jersey, and
Princeton University, he served as 2nd lieutenant in the US Army and was about
to be posted to Europe when the Armistice was signed. He worked first as a
copywriter for an advertising agency in New York, and began novel-writing in
order to earn enough money to marry Zelda Sayre, a glamorous Southern belle.
In 1920 he married Zelda and achieved instant fame with his
first novel, This Side Of Paradise. In 1924 they moved to Europe, where they
lived on and off until 1931. During these years, Zelda suffered a nervous
breakdown and Fitzgerald developed a drinking problem. His extravagant
lifestyle, Zelda’s dementia and his own alcoholism, which in many ways mirrored
the wild and destructive Twenties culminating in the Crash of 1929, meant that
he became known more as a symbol of the ‘Jazz Age’ than for the quality of his
writing. He turned to Hollywood for a job as a screenwriter and set his last
novel, The Last Tycoon, there. The book was never finished, as Fitzgerald died
of a heart attack in 1940. At the time of his death not one of his books was in
print.
His books include Flappers and Philosophers (short stories),
The Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night and Taps at Reveille (short
stories).
The Great Gatsby was published in 1925. Like Nick Carraway,
the novel’s narrator, Fitzgerald was born in the Mid-West and was fascinated by
the leisured classes of the East Coast. At first glance, these are people with
money and exquisite taste, but the cool airiness of the Buchanan’s mansion is
matched by the oppressive, stifling heat in the suite of the Plaza Hotel, the
grotesque barren ash heaps, and the fecklessness of the free-loading guests who
throng to Gatsby’s parties. The novel then is a portrait of a world of wealth,
promise and dream, which, in the end, is undermined by the absence of a moral
framework. But the novel also reflects America in the Twenties — the euphoria
of the post — War years and the underlying consciousness of the impending slump
and the devastation, which followed in its wake.
Gatsby in this context is an enigma, and it is perhaps a mistake
to try to reduce him to a symbolic figure. He has all the charm and money
required by the set he moves in. There is no doubt he is morally suspect —
where exactly does all his money come from? And yet he stands apart. He, unlike
the others, has a dream, which, if realized, will take him out of the
historical framework and back to a time of wonder and enchantment. Of course
this dream is unrealistic and Gatsby is robbed of it by the carelessness of
others, but we know that this is the dream that will endure, perhaps in a way
it is the American dream.
Notes by Heather Godwin
William Hope
Though American by birth, William Hope trained at RADA and
has appeared in the theater on both sides of the Atlantic throughout his
career. His TV and film work has been similarly extensive and has included
roles in Aliens (Gorman) and The Lords of Discipline. A former member of the
BBC Radio Drama Company, he is regularly heard on radio in both plays and
books.
