Is The Great Gatsby a Love Story or a Tragedy? A Critical Literary Analysis

Author: MARTIN MUNYAO MUINDE
Email: Ephantusmartin@gmail.com
Website: https://academiaresearcher.com/

Abstract

1. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby remains one of the most debated novels in American literature, particularly regarding its fundamental nature as either a love story or a tragedy. This comprehensive analysis examines the novel’s dual characteristics, exploring how Fitzgerald masterfully weaves romantic elements with tragic themes to create a complex narrative that transcends simple categorization. Through careful examination of character development, symbolic elements, and thematic content, this paper argues that while The Great Gatsby contains significant romantic elements, it fundamentally operates as a modern American tragedy that uses the illusion of love to expose deeper societal and personal failures. The novel’s enduring appeal lies in its ability to present the American Dream’s corruption through the lens of doomed romance, making it simultaneously a love story and a tragedy, with the tragic elements ultimately predominating.

Keywords: The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, American literature, love story, tragedy, American Dream, literary analysis, Jazz Age, romantic literature

Introduction

The question of whether F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby should be classified as a love story or a tragedy has captivated literary scholars and readers for nearly a century. Published in 1925, this masterpiece of American literature presents Jay Gatsby’s obsessive pursuit of Daisy Buchanan against the backdrop of the Jazz Age’s excess and moral decay. The novel’s complexity lies in its ability to function simultaneously as both genres while ultimately transcending traditional categorizations to become something more profound—a commentary on the corruption of the American Dream itself.

This literary analysis seeks to examine the fundamental question: Is The Great Gatsby primarily a love story or a tragedy? While the novel undeniably contains elements of both genres, a careful examination of its structure, themes, character development, and symbolic content reveals that Fitzgerald crafted a work that uses the framework of romantic pursuit to construct a distinctly American tragedy. The love story serves as the vehicle through which larger tragic themes emerge, including the impossibility of recapturing the past, the hollowness of the American Dream, and the moral bankruptcy of American society in the 1920s.

The significance of this analysis extends beyond mere academic categorization. Understanding the novel’s true nature helps readers appreciate Fitzgerald’s sophisticated critique of American society and his prescient observations about the dangers of unchecked materialism and the pursuit of impossible dreams. The debate itself reflects the novel’s enduring power to generate discussion and interpretation, cementing its place in the American literary canon.

Literature Review and Critical Context

Historical and Critical Perspectives on The Great Gatsby

The critical reception of The Great Gatsby has evolved significantly since its initial publication, with early reviews failing to recognize its eventual status as a masterpiece of American literature. Contemporary critics have approached the love story versus tragedy debate from various angles, contributing to our understanding of the novel’s complex nature. Scholars like Matthew Bruccoli and Jackson Benson have emphasized the tragic elements, arguing that Gatsby’s fate represents the inevitable failure of the American Dream when pursued through morally questionable means (Bruccoli, 1985). These critics view the romantic elements as secondary to the larger tragic narrative about American society’s corruption.

Conversely, other literary scholars, including Sarah Beebe Fryer and Janet Giltrow, have argued for the novel’s fundamental nature as a love story, albeit a doomed one. They contend that Gatsby’s unwavering devotion to Daisy, despite her flaws and the impossibility of their reunion, represents the novel’s emotional core (Fryer, 1988). This perspective emphasizes the genuine nature of Gatsby’s feelings and the tragic beauty of his commitment to an idealized love. However, even these romance-focused interpretations acknowledge the tragic outcome, suggesting that the novel’s power lies in its ability to present love as both transcendent and destructive.

Theoretical Frameworks for Analysis

Modern literary criticism has provided several theoretical frameworks for analyzing The Great Gatsby. New Criticism focuses on the novel’s internal structure and symbolism, revealing how Fitzgerald uses literary devices to create meaning. The green light, the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, and the valley of ashes serve as symbols that transcend the immediate love story to comment on larger themes of hope, moral oversight, and spiritual desolation. Marxist criticism examines the novel’s class dynamics and economic relationships, revealing how Gatsby’s pursuit of Daisy is inextricably linked to his desire for social acceptance and material success.

Feminist literary criticism has also contributed to the debate by examining Daisy’s role and agency within the narrative. Critics like Leland Person argue that viewing Daisy merely as Gatsby’s romantic object diminishes the novel’s complexity and fails to recognize her as a fully realized character trapped within the constraints of her social position (Person, 1978). This perspective suggests that the love story interpretation may oversimplify the complex power dynamics and gender relations that Fitzgerald explores throughout the novel.

Character Analysis: Love and Tragedy in Character Development

Jay Gatsby: The Tragic Romantic Hero

Jay Gatsby embodies the tension between romantic hero and tragic protagonist that defines the novel’s dual nature. His transformation from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby represents both a romantic quest and a tragic self-deception. Gatsby’s love for Daisy drives every aspect of his constructed identity, from his elaborate parties to his carefully crafted persona. However, this love is fundamentally based on an illusion—a five-year-old memory of a woman who no longer exists, if she ever truly did.

Gatsby’s tragic flaw, or hamartia, lies in his inability to accept the passage of time and the impossibility of recreating the past. His famous declaration, “Of course you can!” in response to Nick’s observation that “you can’t repeat the past,” reveals the depth of his delusion (Fitzgerald, 1925, p. 110). This unwavering belief in the possibility of recapturing lost time makes Gatsby simultaneously admirable in his devotion and pitiable in his self-deception. The romantic elements of his character—his unwavering loyalty, his grand gestures, his willingness to sacrifice everything for love—are the very qualities that ensure his tragic downfall.

Furthermore, Gatsby’s criminal associations and morally questionable activities complicate any simple romantic interpretation of his character. While he commits these acts in service of his romantic dream, they ultimately corrupt both him and his quest. The tragedy lies not just in his death, but in the gradual revelation that his romantic idealism has led him down a path of moral compromise that makes his dream inherently unattainable.

Daisy Buchanan: Object of Love or Tragic Figure?

Daisy Buchanan’s characterization is crucial to determining whether the novel functions primarily as a love story or tragedy. If she is merely the object of Gatsby’s romantic pursuit, the novel leans toward love story; if she is a tragic figure in her own right, trapped by circumstances beyond her control, the novel’s tragic elements are strengthened. Fitzgerald’s portrayal of Daisy suggests both interpretations are valid, contributing to the novel’s complex nature.

As a romantic figure, Daisy represents the idealized woman of Gatsby’s dreams, possessed of a voice “full of money” that enchants and captivates (Fitzgerald, 1925, p. 120). Her beauty, charm, and apparent vulnerability make her a compelling romantic heroine. However, closer examination reveals her tragic circumstances: trapped in a loveless marriage, constrained by social expectations, and ultimately powerless to change her situation despite her momentary attraction to Gatsby’s alternative.

The tragic interpretation of Daisy’s character becomes more apparent when considering her final choice to remain with Tom rather than flee with Gatsby. This decision, often criticized as cowardly or mercenary, can also be understood as a realistic assessment of her limited options within the social structure of the 1920s. Her tragedy lies in her inability to transcend the constraints of her class and gender, making her both complicit in the tragic outcome and a victim of circumstances beyond her control.

Nick Carraway: Narrator and Moral Witness

Nick Carraway’s role as narrator and moral witness provides the lens through which readers experience the love story and tragedy. His initial fascination with Gatsby’s romantic quest gradually gives way to moral judgment and tragic recognition. Nick’s evolution throughout the novel mirrors the reader’s journey from romantic engagement to tragic understanding. His final assessment of Gatsby as someone who “represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn” yet possessed “some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life” captures the novel’s dual nature (Fitzgerald, 1925, p. 2).

Nick’s perspective is crucial because it provides the moral framework necessary for tragedy while maintaining sympathy for the romantic elements of Gatsby’s quest. His position as both insider and outsider—from the Midwest but living in East Egg, connected to the wealthy but not truly of their world—allows him to serve as an effective moral commentator on the events he witnesses. Through Nick’s eyes, readers experience both the allure of Gatsby’s romantic dream and the horror of its inevitable destruction.

Thematic Analysis: Love, Death, and the American Dream

The Corruption of Love by Materialism

One of the most compelling arguments for viewing The Great Gatsby as a tragedy rather than a pure love story lies in Fitzgerald’s treatment of how materialism corrupts genuine emotion. Gatsby’s love for Daisy is inextricably bound up with his desire for wealth, status, and social acceptance. The green light that symbolizes his longing for Daisy is located at the end of her dock, but it equally represents the material success that he believes will win her back. This conflation of love and materialism undermines the purity typically associated with romantic love stories.

The novel demonstrates how the pursuit of wealth as a means to love ultimately destroys both the pursuer and the pursued. Gatsby’s criminal activities, undertaken to finance his romantic dream, corrupt his character and make his love story impossible to separate from moral compromise. Similarly, Daisy’s inability to choose love over security reveals how material considerations have invaded and contaminated what should be the realm of pure emotion. The tragedy lies not just in the failure of their love, but in the way their society makes such failure inevitable by subordinating emotional truth to material considerations.

This theme extends beyond the central romance to encompass the broader society depicted in the novel. The Buchanans’ marriage, though stable, is revealed to be hollow and emotionally bankrupt, held together by shared class interests rather than genuine affection. Myrtle Wilson’s affair with Tom represents another attempt to use romantic relationship as a means of social advancement, and it too ends in tragedy. Fitzgerald presents a world where authentic love has been so compromised by material considerations that it becomes impossible to sustain.

The Impossibility of Recapturing the Past

The temporal dimension of Gatsby’s quest provides another crucial element in determining the novel’s fundamental nature. Gatsby’s love for Daisy is essentially necrophilic in its focus on a dead past rather than a living present. His famous parties are attempts to recreate the atmosphere of their original meeting, and his entire carefully constructed identity is designed to make him worthy of a woman who existed five years earlier. This backward-looking orientation is fundamentally tragic rather than romantic, as it denies the possibility of growth, change, and authentic present-moment connection.

The novel’s famous conclusion, with its meditation on being “borne back ceaselessly into the past,” emphasizes the tragic futility of Gatsby’s quest (Fitzgerald, 1925, p. 180). The romantic elements of his love—its intensity, persistence, and devotion—are undermined by their foundation in temporal impossibility. True love requires acceptance of the beloved as they are in the present moment, but Gatsby’s love is for a memory, an ideal, a ghost of past possibility rather than present reality.

This theme connects the personal tragedy of Gatsby’s failed love to the broader American tragedy of a nation that has lost its way by focusing on material success rather than spiritual and emotional fulfillment. The American Dream, as embodied by Gatsby’s quest, becomes a nightmare of endless striving for something that cannot be attained because it exists only in an idealized past that never truly existed in the first place.

Social Class and the Impossibility of Transcendence

The rigid class structure depicted in The Great Gatsby provides the sociological foundation for the novel’s tragic elements. Gatsby’s belief that sufficient wealth can overcome social barriers proves tragically naive. Despite his enormous wealth, elaborate parties, and carefully constructed persona, he remains “Mr. Nobody from Nowhere” in the eyes of the established elite (Fitzgerald, 1925, p. 130). This social reality makes his romantic quest inherently doomed, regardless of Daisy’s personal feelings or his own devotion.

The novel reveals how class differences create insurmountable barriers to authentic connection. Tom and Daisy, despite their moral failings, share a bond of class solidarity that ultimately proves stronger than any romantic attachment. Their ability to retreat “back into their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together” demonstrates how social class creates its own form of intimacy that excludes outsiders regardless of their wealth or devotion (Fitzgerald, 1925, p. 179). This social analysis transforms what might have been a simple love story into a complex tragedy about the impossibility of social mobility and authentic cross-class connection in American society.

The tragic dimension is further emphasized by the violence that erupts when class boundaries are threatened. Myrtle Wilson’s death results directly from her attempt to cross class lines, and Gatsby’s death follows inevitably from his challenge to the established social order. The novel suggests that American society, despite its democratic rhetoric, maintains rigid hierarchies that are enforced through both subtle social pressure and overt violence when necessary.

Symbolic Analysis: Love and Death Intertwined

The Green Light: Hope and Illusion

The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock serves as the novel’s most powerful symbol, embodying both the romantic hope that drives Gatsby and the tragic illusion that destroys him. As a symbol of love, the light represents Gatsby’s unwavering devotion and the intensity of his longing. Its green color suggests growth, renewal, and the possibility of new life that love can bring. The light’s distance across the water mirrors the emotional and social distance Gatsby must bridge to reach Daisy, making his quest seem both romantic and heroic.

However, the green light also functions as a symbol of tragic delusion. Its apparent closeness masks the actual impossibility of reaching it, just as Gatsby’s apparent closeness to achieving his dream masks its fundamental unattainability. The light’s association with money (green) reveals how Gatsby’s romantic quest has been corrupted by material considerations. Most significantly, the light’s fixed position represents the static nature of Gatsby’s dream—it never changes, grows, or develops, just as his love for Daisy remains frozen in the past.

The green light’s symbolic complexity reflects the novel’s dual nature as both love story and tragedy. It embodies the beauty and power of romantic longing while simultaneously revealing the destructive nature of impossible dreams. When Gatsby finally reaches Daisy and the light loses its “colossal significance,” the romantic quest transforms into tragic recognition (Fitzgerald, 1925, p. 93). The symbol’s evolution throughout the novel mirrors the reader’s journey from romantic engagement to tragic understanding.

The Eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg: Moral Oversight and Judgment

The billboard featuring the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg provides another crucial symbol that helps determine the novel’s fundamental nature. These eyes, overlooking the valley of ashes where much of the novel’s violence occurs, suggest the presence of moral judgment and cosmic oversight that is essential to tragic literature. The eyes watch over the moral wasteland of American society, bearing witness to the corruption and violence that result from the pursuit of impossible dreams.

The eyes’ association with Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, an oculist, emphasizes themes of vision and blindness that run throughout the novel. Characters consistently fail to see clearly—Gatsby cannot see Daisy as she truly is, Daisy cannot see beyond her immediate comfort and security, Tom cannot see the consequences of his actions. This spiritual and moral blindness creates the conditions for tragedy by preventing characters from making the clear-sighted choices that might save them.

The symbolic presence of these eyes transforms the novel from a simple love story into a morally complex tragedy. They suggest that the characters’ actions are subject to judgment, even if that judgment comes too late to prevent destruction. The eyes’ commercial origin (they advertise an optometrist’s practice) also connects them to the novel’s themes about the commercialization of American life and the corruption of spiritual values by material considerations.

The Valley of Ashes: Moral and Spiritual Desolation

The valley of ashes serves as perhaps the novel’s most powerful symbol of tragic desolation. This wasteland between West Egg and New York City represents the moral and spiritual consequences of American materialism. It is here that the novel’s violence erupts—Myrtle Wilson’s death occurs in this desolate landscape, and it is from here that her husband emerges to kill Gatsby. The valley’s barren, gray landscape contrasts sharply with the green freshness associated with hope and love, suggesting the ultimate outcome of the American pursuit of material success.

As a symbol, the valley of ashes reveals the hidden costs of the lifestyle pursued by the novel’s wealthy characters. Their parties, cars, and mansions are built upon the exploitation and desolation represented by this wasteland. The people who live here, like the Wilsons, are trapped in poverty and desperation, their lives ground down by the same economic system that enables the wealthy characters’ pursuit of pleasure and romantic fulfillment.

The valley’s symbolic function helps establish the novel’s tragic rather than romantic nature. It serves as a memento mori, a reminder of death and moral consequence that haunts the romantic elements of the story. The fact that the novel’s climactic violence emerges from this desolate place suggests that the tragic consequences of the characters’ actions are inevitable, built into the very structure of their society and moral choices.

Structural Analysis: Tragic Form and Romantic Content

Classical Tragic Structure in Modern Setting

The Great Gatsby follows many conventions of classical tragedy, despite its modern American setting. The novel’s structure mirrors the tragic arc established in ancient Greek drama: exposition introducing the protagonist’s fatal flaw, rising action as the flaw drives the character toward inevitable conflict, climax where the flaw leads to catastrophe, and resolution where the moral and social order is restored through the protagonist’s destruction.

Gatsby’s tragic flaw—his inability to accept the passage of time and the impossibility of recapturing the past—is established early in the novel and drives every subsequent action. The rising action involves his elaborate attempts to recreate the past through parties, wealth accumulation, and careful self-construction. The climax occurs when his dream seems within reach but immediately transforms into nightmare as Daisy proves unable or unwilling to repudiate her past with Tom. The resolution comes with Gatsby’s death and Nick’s moral judgment, restoring a kind of order through the elimination of the character who challenged social boundaries.

This tragic structure contains and ultimately overwhelms the romantic elements of the story. While Gatsby’s love for Daisy provides the emotional energy that drives the plot, the tragic framework determines the story’s ultimate meaning and impact. The romantic content serves the tragic structure rather than vice versa, making the novel fundamentally a tragedy that uses romantic elements to explore larger themes about American society and the human condition.

Narrative Technique and Tragic Recognition

Nick Carraway’s role as narrator is crucial to the novel’s tragic effect. His gradual recognition of Gatsby’s true nature and the moral implications of the events he witnesses mirrors the process of tragic recognition that classical theory identifies as essential to the form. Nick begins with fascination and admiration for Gatsby’s romantic quest, but gradually comes to understand the moral complexity and inevitable destruction that quest entails.

This narrative technique allows Fitzgerald to present the romantic elements of the story sympathetically while maintaining the moral distance necessary for tragic judgment. Nick’s final assessment of Gatsby as “worth the whole damn bunch put together” despite representing “everything for which I have an unaffected scorn” captures the tragic protagonist’s essential nobility despite his fatal flaws (Fitzgerald, 1925, p. 154). This complex moral judgment is characteristic of tragedy rather than romance, which typically presents clearer moral distinctions.

The novel’s famous concluding passage, with its meditation on being “borne back ceaselessly into the past,” provides the kind of philosophical reflection on human destiny that traditionally concludes tragic literature. Nick’s recognition that Gatsby’s story represents something universal about American experience transforms the individual love story into a broader tragic commentary on national character and destiny.

Comparative Analysis: The Great Gatsby and Other Literary Works

Comparison with Classical Tragic Literature

When compared to classical tragic works like Hamlet or King Lear, The Great Gatsby reveals its fundamental alignment with tragic rather than romantic literary tradition. Like Hamlet, Gatsby is a protagonist whose idealistic nature leads to his destruction in a corrupt world. Both characters are haunted by the past (Hamlet by his father’s ghost, Gatsby by his memory of Daisy) and are ultimately destroyed by their inability to navigate the gap between their ideals and reality.

The novel’s treatment of fate and free will also aligns with tragic tradition. Gatsby’s choices lead inevitably to his destruction, but those choices are themselves determined by his character and social circumstances. This tension between individual agency and inevitable destiny is a hallmark of tragic literature. The novel suggests that Gatsby’s fate is both chosen and imposed, making him both responsible for his actions and a victim of forces beyond his control.

Unlike classical tragedy, however, The Great Gatsby locates the source of tragic conflict in social and economic structures rather than cosmic or divine forces. This modernization of tragic form allows Fitzgerald to critique specifically American social conditions while maintaining the universal appeal of tragic literature. The novel’s tragic power derives from its ability to connect individual destruction to broader social criticism.

Contrast with Pure Romance Literature

When compared to works of pure romantic literature, The Great Gatsby reveals significant differences that argue for its classification as tragedy. Pure romances typically focus on the development of mutual love between characters and conclude with union or, in the case of tragic romances, separation due to external circumstances rather than character flaws or moral failure.

The Great Gatsby differs from this pattern in crucial ways. Gatsby’s love is largely one-sided and based on illusion rather than mutual understanding. Daisy’s feelings remain ambiguous throughout the novel, and her ultimate choice suggests that she never shared the intensity of Gatsby’s devotion. More importantly, their separation results not from external obstacles but from internal character flaws and moral choices that make their union impossible.

The novel’s focus on moral judgment and social criticism also distinguishes it from pure romance. While romance literature typically suspends moral judgment in favor of emotional engagement, The Great Gatsby consistently evaluates its characters’ choices and finds them wanting. The novel’s power derives not from emotional identification with the lovers but from moral recognition of their flaws and the social conditions that create those flaws.

Contemporary Critical Perspectives

Modern Interpretations of Love and Tragedy in the Novel

Contemporary literary criticism has increasingly recognized the complexity of the love story versus tragedy debate in The Great Gatsby. Recent scholarship has moved beyond simple categorization to explore how Fitzgerald uses the tension between romantic and tragic elements to create meaning. Critics like Morris Dickstein argue that the novel’s power lies precisely in its ability to function as both love story and social tragedy, with each interpretation enriching the other (Dickstein, 2002).

Feminist criticism has contributed to this discussion by examining how gender roles and expectations shape both the romantic and tragic elements of the story. Critics like Leland Person argue that traditional interpretations have oversimplified Daisy’s character and agency, suggesting that a more nuanced understanding of her situation reveals additional tragic dimensions (Person, 1978). This perspective suggests that the novel contains multiple tragic stories—Gatsby’s, Daisy’s, and society’s—that intersect and reinforce each other.

Cultural criticism has also enriched understanding of the novel’s dual nature by placing it in the context of American cultural development in the 1920s. The novel’s treatment of love and tragedy reflects broader cultural tensions between traditional values and modern materialism, between democratic ideals and social reality, between individual aspiration and social constraint. These cultural dimensions add layers of meaning that transcend simple genre classification.

The Novel’s Enduring Appeal and Relevance

The continuing debate over the novel’s fundamental nature reflects its enduring power to speak to contemporary concerns. Each generation of readers has found new relevances in Gatsby’s story, seeing in it reflections of their own cultural anxieties about love, success, and social mobility. The novel’s ability to function as both love story and tragedy allows it to appeal to different readers and different historical moments while maintaining its essential themes.

Recent criticism has also explored how the novel’s themes remain relevant to contemporary American society. The corruption of idealism by materialism, the difficulty of authentic connection across class lines, and the destructive nature of impossible dreams continue to resonate with readers living in an era of increasing economic inequality and social fragmentation. The novel’s tragic vision seems particularly relevant to contemporary concerns about the sustainability of the American Dream.

The persistence of the love story versus tragedy debate itself demonstrates the novel’s complexity and richness. Rather than representing a failure of critical consensus, this ongoing discussion reveals the work’s ability to sustain multiple valid interpretations while maintaining its essential unity of vision and impact.

Conclusion

After careful examination of character development, thematic content, symbolic elements, and structural considerations, it becomes clear that while The Great Gatsby contains significant romantic elements, it functions fundamentally as a modern American tragedy. The love story between Gatsby and Daisy serves as the vehicle through which Fitzgerald explores larger tragic themes about the corruption of idealism, the impossibility of transcending social barriers, and the destructive nature of the American Dream when pursued through morally questionable means.

The novel’s tragic nature is established through its adherence to classical tragic structure, its focus on character flaws that lead inevitably to destruction, and its moral complexity that prevents simple romantic identification with the protagonists. Gatsby’s love for Daisy, while genuine in its intensity, is fundamentally flawed by its basis in illusion, its corruption by material considerations, and its backward-looking orientation that denies the possibility of authentic present-moment connection.

However, the novel’s power lies not in its pure adherence to either romantic or tragic conventions, but in its sophisticated integration of both elements to create a uniquely American literary work. The romantic elements provide the emotional energy and reader engagement necessary to make the tragic themes impactful, while the tragic framework provides the moral seriousness and social criticism that give the romance broader significance.

The continuing debate over the novel’s fundamental nature reflects its richness and complexity rather than any failure of critical understanding. The Great Gatsby succeeds in being both a love story and a tragedy because it recognizes that in American society, these categories are not mutually exclusive. The novel’s tragic vision encompasses the corruption of love by materialism, the impossibility of authentic connection across class lines, and the self-destructive nature of impossible dreams—themes that remain as relevant today as they were in Fitzgerald’s era.

Ultimately, The Great Gatsby stands as one of the great achievements of American literature not because it conforms to traditional genre expectations, but because it transcends them to create something new: a distinctly American tragedy that uses the framework of doomed romance to explore the gap between national ideals and social reality. The novel’s enduring appeal lies in its ability to present universal themes through specifically American characters and situations, making it both a love story for the ages and a tragic commentary on the American experience.

References

Bruccoli, M. J. (1985). Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Dickstein, M. (2002). The authority of failure. American Literary History, 14(3), 346-375.

Fitzgerald, F. S. (1925). The Great Gatsby. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Fryer, S. B. (1988). Fitzgerald’s new women: Harbingers of change. Studies in Short Fiction, 25(4), 423-431.

Person, L. S. (1978). Herstory and Daisy Buchanan. American Literature, 50(2), 250-257.

Stallman, R. W. (1955). Gatsby and the hole in time. Modern Fiction Studies, 1(4), 2-16.

Trilling, L. (1951). The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society. New York: Viking Press.

Way, B. (1980). F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Art of Social Fiction. London: Edward Arnold.

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About the Author:
MARTIN MUNYAO MUINDE is an academic researcher specializing in American literature and literary criticism. For more scholarly content and research papers, visit https://academiaresearcher.com/ or contact Ephantusmartin@gmail.com.