The Great Gatsby / Stage 5 - B2

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The story happens in America, in the 1920s, during the Jazz Age. Nick Carraway, a young bonds broker, moves to New York to learn a bond business. By a fateful coincidence, he rents a house near a large mansion. Over time, he meets his mysterious neighbour – Jay Gatsby. Many rumours circulate over Gatsby and his unbelievable wealth. Jay Gatsby – who is he? A bootlegger? A fraud? A rich man? Or simply a dreamer? Nick Carraway makes friends with Gatsby and soon discovers the mystery of his life.

Gatsby, after going through many difficult tests and sufferings, could achieve a significant standing in society and incredible richness. He could reach everything thanks to his resilient dream – Daisy. Gatsby’s love for Daisy made him a strong man who feared nothing on his way to his dream. He became rich and famous just to be equal to Daisy’s status in society. After five years, Daisy meets Gatsby and reciprocates his love. Will she sacrifice everything for him?

Or will she prefer to live with her husband unhappily? Gatsby’s life depends on Daisy and her decision. Daisy is the only purpose in his life, she is his dream that lurks before him. He can reach his dream or he can he lose everything…

95 pages, Paperback

Published July 1, 2018

About the author

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, widely known simply as Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age, a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Born into a middle-class family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald was raised primarily in New York state. He attended Princeton University where he befriended future literary critic Edmund Wilson. Owing to a failed romantic relationship with Chicago socialite Ginevra King, he dropped out in 1917 to join the United States Army during World War I. While stationed in Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, a Southern debutante who belonged to Montgomery's exclusive country-club set. Although she initially rejected Fitzgerald's marriage proposal due to his lack of financial prospects, Zelda agreed to marry him after he published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise (1920). The novel became a cultural sensation and cemented his reputation as one of the eminent writers of the decade.
His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), propelled him further into the cultural elite. To maintain his affluent lifestyle, he wrote numerous stories for popular magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire. During this period, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, where he befriended modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, including Ernest Hemingway. His third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), received generally favorable reviews but was a commercial failure, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. Despite its lackluster debut, The Great Gatsby is now hailed by some literary critics as the "Great American Novel". Following the deterioration of his wife's mental health and her placement in a mental institute for schizophrenia, Fitzgerald completed his final novel, Tender Is the Night (1934).
Struggling financially because of the declining popularity of his works during the Great Depression, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood, where he embarked upon an unsuccessful career as a screenwriter. While living in Hollywood, he cohabited with columnist Sheilah Graham, his final companion before his death. After a long struggle with alcoholism, he attained sobriety only to die of a heart attack in 1940, at 44. His friend Edmund Wilson edited and published an unfinished fifth novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), after Fitzgerald's death. In 1993, a new edition was published as The Love of the Last Tycoon, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli.