1920s 20th-century america american american-dream american-fiction american-lit class classic classic-fiction classic-literature classics drama f-scott-fitzgerald fitzgerald high-school historical historical-fiction jazz-age literary literary-fiction literature long-island lost-generation love made-into-movie modern modern-classic modern-classics modernism money movie new-york novel novels romance school society tragedy twenties twentieth-century united-states us usa wealth

Kathleen Parkinson places this brilliant and bitter satire on the moral failure of the jazz age firmly in the context of F. Scott Fitzgerald's life and times. She explores the intricate patterns of the novel, its chronology, locations, imagery and use of colour, and how these contribute to a seamless interplay of social comedy and symbolic landscape. She devotes a perceptive chapter to F. Scott Fitzgerald's controversial portrayal of women and goes on to discuss how the central characters, Gatsby and Nick Carraway, embody and confront the dualism inherent in the American Dream.