"The Great Gatsby": Society, symbolism and style

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to analyse The Great Gatsby and the main themes that the novel considers. This literary work depicts a realistic situation of the social classes’ nature and how they behave during the historical period known as “The Roaring Twenties”, it questions the veracity of the “American Dream” and it deals with universal topics such as wealth, isolation, personal dissatisfaction, war aftermaths and having to face mistaken life choices. These issues will be approached from a theoretical point of view, and parallelisms between characters in the novel and United States’ society will be established. In addition, symbols present in the story will be explored with the purpose of fulfilling a thorough study of the book since they include a large amount of relevant meaning. To conclude the analysis, in the third and last section, the attention will be drawn into the author’s style in The Great Gatsby, that is, the techniques and literary devices which F. Scott Fitzgerald makes use of to convey the topics previously mentioned, as well as his influence and relation with other authors. Moreover, a bigger understanding of Fitzgerald’s narrative will be achieved since general trends of his prose will be studied.