A Look at the Characters of F. Scott Fitzgerald

The novel The Great Gatsby is about life in the “upper crust” of society during the nineteen-twenties. This novel gives a startling and vivid description of the life and attitudes of the people living in this type of society. It also shows the different ways people regarded wealth and what they used it for. More notably however, as in many Fitzgerald stories, it shows how a strong undying love for the wrong woman can consume and ruin a man’s life. 

This statement is well supported in many of Fitzgerald’s stories but is best supported in the novel The Great Gatsby and the short story “Winter Dreams”. In both stories a young man falls hopelessly in love with a woman who is interested in and only capable of loving one thing—and that thing is not he. In The Great Gatsby Jay Gatsby falls in love with a young woman named Daisy Fay while living in Louisville as a young officer in the army. He courted her for a time until he was called away on an assignment in Europe. After the Armistice of World War One, Gatsby spent some time at Oxford University, but being so in love with Daisy he returned to the States and began developing a plan to win Daisy’s “love”.