ACTIVITY
11
Global Culture II
Valentina Zaragoza Duarte AL07042520
Marcela De la Garza Fonseca AL07050180
Karen Vázquez Chávez AL03050488
Andrea Talahassi Ramirez Quintanar AL07047363
Elías Isaí Luna Hernández AL07086702
Diana Fernanda Gámez Urbina AL03058421
F. Scott Fitzgerald
AUTHOR American novelist and writer
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota,in a
Catholic family. From an early age, He showed a strong interest in writing his first story at
the age of thirteen.He studied at St. Paul Academy and later at the Newman School in New
Jersey, where Father Sigourney Fay encouraged his literary ambitions. He then enrolled at
Princeton University but left without graduating to join the army during World War I.
Although he never saw combat, his military experience inspired his first novel, “This Side of
Paradise”(1920), which became a success and allowed him to marry Zelda Sayre.
Fitzgerald became a prominent writer of the “Jazz Age”, balancing novel writing with short
stories for mass circulation magazines. His most celebrated novel, “The Great
Gatsby”(1925), is widely regarded as a masterpiece of American literature, known for it’s
lyrical style and the critique of American Dream.
His personal life was marked by extravagance, financial struggles, and Zelda’s mental illness,
which led to her institutionalization in 1930. Despite difficulties, Fitzgerald continued to
write short stories to support his family. Scott died on December 21, 1940, in Hollywood,
leaving his final novel, “The Last Tycoon”, that was unfinished. Today, he is remembered as
one of the most important literary voices of the 20th century.
G R E A T G A T
E S B
T H Y
PLOT
In the summer of 1922, Nick Carraway moved from Minnesota to work as a bond salesman in New
York. Nick rents a house in West Egg (a fake city in real life), a suburb of New York on Long Island, full
of the "new rich" who have made their fortunes too recently to have built strong social connections.
Nick graduated from Yale and has connections in East Egg, a town where the people with social
connections and "old" money live. One night, Nick drives to East Egg to have dinner with his cousin,
Daisy, and her husband, Tom Buchanan, a classmate of Nick's at Yale. There, he meets Jordan Baker,
a beautiful and cynical professional golfer. Jordan tells Nick that Tom is having an affair. Upon
returning home from dinner, Nick sees his mysterious neighbor Jay Gatsby holding his arms toward
the Long Island Sound. Nick looks out across the water, but sees only a green light blinking at the end
of a dock on the far shore.
A few days later, Tom invites Nick to a party in New York City. On the way, Tom picks up his mistress,
Myrtle Wilson, the wife of George Wilson, the owner of an auto shop in an industrial area between
West Egg and New York City called the Valley of Ashes. At the party, Myrtle gets drunk and makes fun
of Daisy. Tom punches her and breaks her nose.
Nick also attends one of Gatsby's extravagant Saturday night parties. He runs into Jordan there and meets Gatsby for the first time. Gatsby privately tells
Jordan a story she describes as the most "amazing thing." After going to lunch with Gatsby and a shady business partner of Gatsby's named Meyer
Wolfsheim, Nick meets with Jordan and learns the "amazing" story: Gatsby met and fell in love with Daisy before World War I, and bought his West Egg
mansion just to be near her and impress her. At Gatsby's request, Nick arranges a meeting between Gatsby and Daisy. The two soon rediscover their love.
Daisy invites Nick and Gatsby to lunch with her, Tom, and Jordan. During lunch, Tom realizes Daisy and Gatsby are having an affair. He insists they all
go to New York City. As soon as they gather at the Plaza Hotel, Tom and Gatsby get into an argument about Daisy. Gatsby tells Tom that Daisy never
loved Tom and has only ever loved him. But Daisy can only admit that she loved them both, and Gatsby is stunned. Tom then reveals that Gatsby made
his fortune by bootlegging alcohol and other illegal means. Tom then dismissively tells Daisy to go home with Gatsby, since he knows Gatsby won't
"bother" her anymore. They leave in Gatsby's car, while Tom, Nick, and Jordan follow sometime later.
As they drive home, Tom, Nick, and Jordan come upon an accident: Myrtle has been hit and killed by a car. Tom realizes that it must have been Gatsby's
car that struck Myrtle, and he curses Gatsby as a coward for driving off. But Nick learns from Gatsby later that night that Daisy was actually behind the
wheel.
George Wilson is convinced that the driver of the yellow car that hit Myrtle is also her lover. While at work that day, Nick fights on the phone with Jordan.
In the afternoon, Nick has a kind of premonition and finds Gatsby shot to death in his pool. Wilson's dead body is a few yards away. Nick organizes a
funeral, but none of the people who were supposedly Gatsby's friends come. Only Gatsby's father and one other man attend.
Nick and Jordan end their relationship. Nick runs into Tom soon after, and learns that Tom told Wilson that Gatsby had run over Myrtle. Nick
doesn't tell Tom that Daisy was at the wheel. Disgusted with the corrupt emptiness of life on the East Coast, Nick moves back to Minnesota. But the
night before he leaves, he walks down to Gatsby's beach and looks out over Long Island Sound. He thinks about Gatsby and compares him to the
first settlers to America. Like Gatsby, Nick says, all people must move forward with their arms outstretched toward the future, like boats traveling
upstream against the current of the past.
CONTEXT/HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
“The Great Gatsby” is set in the 1920s (Roaring Twenties), known for being a period of social and artistic
upheaval following World War I, and characterized by economic prosperity, the evolution of jazz music, and
the practice of criminal activities such as bootlegging. Fitzgerald alludes to these social developments through
simple and unobtrusive details such as automobiles, to more complex themes such as the culture of organized
crime, which was the source of Gatsby's fortune.
The novel exposes a warning to the American dream, as it exposes themes of decadence, idealism, resistance
to change, social upheaval and excess, creating a portrait of the jazz age and the Roaring Twenties. Fitzgerald
wrote “The Great Gatsby” after moving to Great Neck, New York in 1922, where observing the lifestyle of the
rich and famous in the area inspired him to write this work. Touching on highly criticized themes at the
time, when it was published in 1925, it received mixed reviews, but today it is considered one of the best
written novels of its time.
V A N T F OR
L E
E LI
R
TE
IT
RA
“The Great Gatsby” is relevant in literature
WHY IS
for its depiction of the American dream, the
TURE?
decadence of the 1920s and its timeless
themes of love, money and morality. As it
talks about themes such as love, money,
social class, loyalty and morality, as the
author creates an atmosphere that transports
the reader into the era and into the minds of
the characters. What made it to be relevant is
to invite reflection on human behavior, the
consequences of the pursuit of happiness and
the importance of honesty and morality.
THANK
YOU
