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Oct 21, 2019
This is a beautiful and simple novel. During World War II, thousands of soldiers carried a copy of this book in their rucksacks, each dreaming of a girl like Daisy back home. Indeed, it was the Allied soldiers who made it so widely popular. It might be difficult for many Americans today to comprehend the breadth and scope of this book, who are so used to making monosyllabic grunts on Instagram or Snapchat, and to fully appreciate the amazing beauty of the language and structure of this Great American Novel. The sentences are sublime. It is, however, worth the effort for all of us to enter Gatsby's world and learn from it. The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925, and it follows a cast of characters living in the fictional towns of West Egg and East Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession with the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Roaring Twenties that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream. First published by Scribner's in April 1925, The Great Gatsby received mixed reviews and sold poorly. And so Fitzgerald died in 1940, in poverty and in ill health, believing himself to be a failure and his work forgotten. However, the novel experienced a revival during World War II, as innumerable soldiers would carry a copy of the novel in their duffel bags, dreaming of having a Daisy back home. The fictional Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanon were very much modeled after Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Sayre. Now, Fitzgerald is finally at peace, buried with Zelda Sayre at Saint Mary's Catholic Church and Cemetery, located beside the Rockville Metro Station. Today, The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be a literary classic, and many look upon it as the "Great American Novel."