Jacket Illustration by Francis Cugat

See Fitzgerald in action		 Introduction
 

      The Great Gatsby was published in 1922 by F. Scott Fitzgerald. At first glance, the novel appears to be a simple love story, but further examination reveals Fitzgerald's masterful scrutiny of American society during the 1920s and the corruption of the American dream. Ms. Latour's 2nd period English Class at West Springfield High School has diligently examined The Great Gatsby and constructed a database of critical analysis of the novel. Each student was assigned a Literary Topic and an Ancillary Topic to study and contribute to the project. The Literary Topics deal with plot, characters, and literary themes of the novel while the Ancillary Topics examine the common themes of the time period, the 1920s.


About the Author F(rancis) Scott (Key) Fitzgerald

     Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in St. Paul, MN and died in 1940. One of the greatest American writers of the 20th Century, Fitzgerald was the literary spokesman of the jazz age, having written about people whose lives resembled his own. He and his wife, Zelda, lived a celebrated life, glittering and dissipated, in New York City and the French Riviera, but his later years were plagued by financial worries and his wife's insanity. Fitzgerald's novels include

This Side of Paradise (1920)
The Beautiful and Damned (1922)
The Great Gatsby (1922)
Tender Is the Night (1934)
The Last Tycoon (1941)
He also published four short-story collections.
 


"There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn't be. He is too many people, if he's any good."
||| Gatsby Project