Great Gatsby, The

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.” Step into the glittering yet hollow world of the 1920s—a realm of champagne, jazz, and restless ambition. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald peers beyond the shimmer of the American Dream, revealing the illusions and disillusionment at its core. The novel unfolds in the summer of 1922 through the eyes of Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate and World War I veteran who rents a modest home in West Egg, Long Island. His enigmatic neighbor, Jay Gatsby, is a self-made millionaire famed for extravagant parties but haunted by a singular obsession: to reclaim Daisy Buchanan, the woman he once loved. Daisy, trapped in wealth and a loveless marriage, becomes both the object of Gatsby’s dream and a symbol of its emptiness. At its heart, The Great Gatsby is a meditation on illusion, identity, and the cost of desire. It is both a tragic love story and a sharp critique of the American Dream—its promises, its failures, and its corruption. Written in the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald’s lyrical prose captures a generation intoxicated by success yet shadowed by disillusionment. A century later, the novel endures because it speaks to the dreamer in us all, chasing a light always just out of reach.