Chicago and the Great Gatsby

Fitzgerald and King

In the wake of the premiere of the new, star-studded 'Gatsby' film based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'roaring twenties' novel, critics re-earthing the facts of the author's private life and how it parallels to the plot of the story.

The themes of 'Gatsby': wealth, arrogance, ostentatious egoism and 'unsustainable greed and a lack of morality' were clearly close to Fitzgerald's heart as he wrote an entire novel satirizing them. In this week's Chicago Tribune, Christopher Borrelli examines Fitzgerald's life as a young adult by way of his ledger in an article entitled, 'Real Daisy Bloomed on Chicago's North Shore'. From brief entries such as:

January 1915: 'Met Ginerva'

June 1915: 'Nobody home and midnight frolic with Ginerva'  

and finally,

June 1917: 'Ginerva engaged?'

These entries describe the two-year period of courting the once 19-year old Fitzgerald and then 16-year old Ginerva King experienced. According to Borrelli, King was a "Lake Forest debutante who spurned Fitzgerald, a poor college student at the time, and married into a wealthy Chicago family". This almost completely echoes the story of the fictitious Daisy Buchanan, the woman that the rags to riches Jay Gatsby fell for young. Like Ginerva, Daisy married Tom Buchanan, a wealthy, close-minded polo-playing man. Could it be that Fitzgerald first admired and aspired to the rich, but found himself jilted and upset when he proved not good enough to live among them?

I wonder why after all of these years and multiple film adaptations, the American public is still fascinated with this unlikely and sad love story. How it is that public admires Gatsby's attempt to disprove the nostalgia that Fitzgerald received himself from a Lake Forester, "Poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls" (Correlli)? How does this make Gatsby out as a hero or just a lovesick idealist? Why does this of defying the odds play so well in American culture even to this day?