The Great Gatsby

The great depression and the new deal

After the first world war a serious economic crisis struck the USA. The crisis was mainly due to overproduction: the abundant harvest of autumn 1929 caused prices of agricultural produce to fall, leaving many farmers in poverty. Besides, a lot of industrial products were offered on the market but workers couldn't afford to buy them because their salaries were very low. All this led to a situation of chaos which culminated in the so-called Wall Street Crash on October 24th, 1929. In only a few days financial investors lost all the money, prices went down, industrial production was greatly reduced, lots of farmers had to sell their properties and factories closed down. This crises was called "the great depression" and lasted 10 years.

The president F.D. Roosevelt tried to solve the crises with a policy based on vast spending of public money on important warks, such as dams, roads and other projects. His policy was called the "New Deal".

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the summary of the Jazz Age (a term he coined). He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Born in Minnesota, Fitzgerald spent the first decade of his childhood primarily in New York. His parents, both devout Catholics, sent Fitzgerald to two Catholic schools and then to Newman Academy.  After graduating in 1913, he decided to stay in New Jersey to continue his artistic development at Princeton University where he firmly dedicated himself to improving his craft as a writer. There he became friends with future critics and writers.
Fitzgerald made several journeys to Europe and mostly in Paris where he met Ernest Hemingway. In 1917 he joined the army and in June 1918 he fall in love with Zelda Sayre.

Although Fitzgerald's passion lay in writing novels, only his first novel sold well enough to support the opulent lifestyle that he and Zelda adopted as New York celebrities. (The Great Gatsby, now considered to be his masterpiece, did not become popular until after Fitzgerald's death.) Because of this lifestyle, as well as the bills from Zelda's medical care for the schizophrenia that struck Zelda in 1930, Fitzgerald was constantly in financial trouble and often required loans to his friends.
Fitzgerald had been an alcoholic since his college days, and became notorious during the 1920s for his extraordinarily heavy drinking, leaving him in poor health by the late 1930s.He died at age 44  of a heart attack.

"The Great Gatsby" 

Author	F. Scott Fitzgerald
Cover artist	Francis Cugat
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Published	10 April 1925 (Charles Scribner's Sons)

The Great Gatsby is considered to be F.S. Fitzgerald’s famous novel. It is a summary of the “roaring twenties”, a devastating exposé of the “jazz age” and a work of great originality.

It tells the story of the mysterious Jay Gatsby who lives in a luxurious house on the Long Island shore whose big and glittering parties have become legendary on the island. The narrator of the story: Nick Carraway has a house near Gatsby house, while Nick’s cousin: Daisy and her wealthy husband: Tom Buchanan live across the harbour. Gatsby reveals to Nick that he had a love story with Daisy before the war and her marriage, and the reason of all the glittering parties was his desire to meet her again.

The plot brings out Fitzgerald’s central theme of the dark surrounding the brightest light, the shallowness of many human friendship. It is a portrait of wealthy American society of “roaring twenties”.

Written in an easy style, it is now considered a classic of American literature from the period following the First World War, and is one of the great novels of the twenty century.