Gatsby's Green Light

Published in 1925, The Great Gatsby follows Jay Gatsby, who throws lavish parties at his West Egg mansion while staring at a green light across the bay marking Daisy Buchanan's dock. Born James Gatz to poor North Dakota farmers, he reinvented himself through sheer will, military connections, and criminal enterprise.

Gatsby embodies both the intoxicating possibility and the fatal delusion of the American Dream — the belief that anyone can become anything through determination alone. Fitzgerald saw the beauty and the lie at once.