In the summer of 1922, Nick Carraway moves next door to the mysterious Jay Gatsby, whose huge parties hide a single hope: Daisy Buchanan, across the bay.
A short, sharp classic about money, longing and carelessness, told by a narrator who admires the man he disapproves of. It is about forty-eight thousand words, so it reads fast, and its symbols (the green light, the billboard eyes, the valley of ashes, the cars) reward a second pass. Four and a half out of five (draft opinion).
Every guide comes as a video and a full written article. Pick the one you need: the review is spoiler-free, the ending explained is not.
The Great Gatsby summary, chapter by chapter: all 9 chapters with a key quote and a symbol tag (green light, billboard eyes, valley of ashes, cars) for each. Full spoilers.
The Great Gatsby (1925) is a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In the summer of 1922, a young bond salesman named Nick Carraway rents a house on Long Island next door to a mystery millionaire, Jay Gatsby, who throws enormous parties and is waiting for one particular guest. The book has nine chapters and runs about forty-eight thousand words. The United States public domain started covering works from 1925 on January 1, 2021, so the text is free to read, and we worked from Project Gutenberg ebook #64317.
Below you’ll find a chapter by chapter summary with full spoilers. Every chapter gets a box with what happens, one tiny quote with its chapter number, and a tag for four symbols: the green light, the billboard eyes, the valley of ashes and the cars. The plot and counts come from the text; the symbol readings are our opinion.
A short, sharp classic about money, longing and carelessness, told by a narrator who admires the man he disapproves of. It is about forty-eight thousand words, so it reads fast, and its symbols (the green light, the billboard eyes, the valley of ashes, the cars) reward a second pass. Four and a half out of five (draft opinion). Read it if: you want a short classic you can finish in a weekend; you need a chapter by chapter guide for class or a book club; you like novels where the symbols and the plot work together; you want a story about wanting something that cannot be repeated. Skip it if: you need characters who are easy to like: almost none of them are; a fatal car crash, a shooting, and period racist and antisemitic language are a hard line for you; you want a fast, twisty plot: this is a slow-burn tragedy told in nine chapters.
In the summer of 1922, narrator Nick Carraway moves next door to Jay Gatsby on Long Island. Gatsby throws huge parties because he hopes Nick's cousin Daisy Buchanan will walk in, and the story follows how that hope ends.
Nine chapters, numbered with Roman numerals, in the Project Gutenberg edition we read. We count about forty-eight thousand words across them.
In the United States, yes. The novel came out in 1925, and Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain and NPR both reported that works from 1925 entered the US public domain on January 1, 2021. Other countries have different rules. Our reading edition is Project Gutenberg ebook #64317.
