04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘The Great Gatsby' at 100: An All-American Enigma
'The Great Gatsby,' published 100 years ago this month, is F. Scott Fitzgerald's most perfectly realized work of art. It reveals a new and confident mastery of his material, a fascinating if sensational plot, deeply interesting characters, a silken style that conveys nuances of mood and feeling, and a Keatsian ability to evoke a romantic atmosphere. Fitzgerald portrays the theme of corrupted idealism and satirizes attractive but vacuous people who 'played polo and were rich together.'
When the narrator and outsider Nick Carraway first sees the enchanting Daisy Buchanan, she asks if friends miss her in Chicago and he feels obliged to offer her witty flattery: 'The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and there's a persistent wail all night along the north shore.' Though Daisy, married to Tom Buchanan, has social status, a pretty daughter and everything money can buy, she's spoiled and bored. Echoing T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land' ('What shall we do tomorrow? / What shall we ever do?'), published in 1922, she asks, 'What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon . . . and the day after that, and the next thirty years?'