On The Inevitability Of Gatsby's Tragedy

F·Scott Fitzgerald, the famous American novelist in the 20th century, is known as the spokesman and laureate of the "Jazz Age" America, whose works give us an accurate picture of the aura of the American twenties. The Great Gatsby is thought to be his finest work. It is generally viewed among critics that it is a novel about the American society in the 1920s. A lot of essays on it were focused either on its quintessential vision of the American dream, romantic hope and romantic disillusion or on the narrative techniques, and there are discussions on the role of the dual-visioned narrator Nick Carraway. Character analysis, except the analysis of Nick's role as a narrator, remains far from thorough and pointed. Although some critics have mentioned the inevitability of Gatsby's tragedy in their essays, thorough and detailed analysis has not been found.This dissertation analyzes the inevitability of Gatsby's tragedy from social, historical and authorial perspectives by examining the origins and essential nature of Gatsby's dreams, the naivety and innocence in his personality and the cruelty of the Jazz Age society epitomized by the ruthless and immoral Buchanans, for a combination of these elements defines Gatsby's failure and destruction in the end. Theme discussion in this paper is basically done through character analysis.