F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, was written in the 1920s about that time, and the elite of American society that came to be at that time. As Robert Emmet Long wrote, "The Great Gatsby emerges out of a quite definite intellectual literary milieu, and expresses its concerns" (172). It was the time of America's great economic success, as the post-war Europe was not a match for it. It was the time of jazz and speakeasies, the time of glamour and luxury. It was the "roaring 20s". Overall, the novel talks about the original American Dream and its corruption by money at the time of Gatsby, and about "the foreclosure of the American dream" in general (Robert Emmet Long, 174). It is probably best summarized by the following paragraphs.
The novel, however, is dry and bitter in tone instead. F. Scott Fitzgerald used it to criticize the modern society through symbol and the novel's background, through his characters and their "props".
"Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except for shadowy, mowing glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of an old island that flowered here for Dutch sailors' eyes--a fresh, green breast of the new world.....
....He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tom ...