So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

A final sentence that stamped its mark on the pinnacle of American literature from the post-First World War generation of novelists, as it continues to do so today, and it epitomises the central themes of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: the unrelenting pursuit of dreams, the inevitability of the elusiveness of time, and the futility of attempting to resurrect the past. Indeed, this extraordinary sentence does not just encapsulate the tragic central themes of The Great Gatsby; it also ensnares the stark reality of human existence from any moment in history, including the present.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896. His family was part of the middle class in Saint Paul, Minnesota, but he was raised primarily in New York state. He attended Princeton University. While he was at Princeton, F. Scott Fitzgerald had a failed romantic relationship with a Chicago socialite and dropped out of Princeton in 1917 to join the Army during World War I. While his regiment was stationed in Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, a Southern debutante who belonged to Montgomery’s exclusive country-club set. His initial marriage proposal was rejected because of his lack of financial prospects. However, Zelda’s heart changed when Fitzgerald’s fortune and fame flourished in the wake of his 1920 publication of the commercially successful novel This Side of Paradise, which became a cultural sensation and anchored his reputation as one of the decade’s towering writers. The publication in 1922 of Fitzgerald’s second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, impelled Fitzgerald further into the cultural elite, and he travelled frequently to Europe. During that time, he intermingled with the ‘Lost Generation ‘ and, in particular, befriended Ernest Hemingway. Peculiarly, The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, was not a commercial success, despite extensive critical acclaim. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final novel, Tender is the Night, was published in 1934, after he had admitted his wife to a psychiatric hospital because of her declining mental health. With his wealth declining during the Great Depression and his entrenched battle with alcoholism, F. Scott Fitzgerald moved to Los Angeles to seek fame as a scriptwriter, and he sadly passed away in 1940. Yet, ironically, after his passing, The Great Gatsby garnered further critical acclaim to be hailed by many book critics as a great American novel.

The publication of The Great Gatsby in 1925 could not have occurred at a more pertinent moment in American history, as the country was basking in the economic prosperity of the ‘Roaring Twenties’, a time of significant social transition and hedonism. Set during the summer of 1922, in the fictional town of West Egg on Long Island, the novel follows the life of its narrator and often disillusioned spectator, Nick Carraway, who becomes entwined in the lives of his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and his enigmatic neighbour, Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is a wealthy and obscure man, basking in the extravagance of his parties yet also enslaved to his unrequited love for Daisy. The novel explores themes of wealth and class, with Gatsby’s pursuit of success and love symbolising the American Dream’s elusive, often unattainable nature. Gatsby, who is not from old money and acquired his fortune through bootlegging, lives in hope and illusion to regain his past love, Daisy, who, whilst charming yet also a superficial socialite (from East Egg), is married to Tom, and she represents the carelessness and emptiness of the old-money elite. Tom, wealthy and arrogant, represents the imperiousness of old money. Myrtle is Tom’s mistress, who hails from the industrial ‘Valley of Ashes’, symbolising the exploited classes of the ‘Roaring Twenties’. The class division between East Egg and West Egg, the elusiveness of wealth, and Gatsby’s unattainable pursuit of social pedigree are subtly yet brilliantly symbolised by many scenic portrayals, such as the green light that glows across the water from Tom’s and Daisy’s home to Gatsby’s. After a confrontation over Daisy’s choice of Tom, Daisy takes Gatsby’s car and drives it recklessly. During her recklessness, Daisy kills Myrtle, an accident for which Gatsby takes the blame. Tom then manipulates Myrtle’s husband to kill Gatsby before killing himself, and the novel concludes with Gatsby’s lonely funeral and Tom’s return to the Midwest, disillusioned with life.

And so, we return to where we began, with that marvellous final sentence of the novel, which embraces the central themes of The Great Gatsby and how those themes indelibly stamp themselves on human existence, serving as an immortal reminder of our failings as a supposedly superior species.