Greats: Wars and Gatsbys | Setting in Fiction

Setting is an important and integral part of any piece of fiction. Setting can determine theme and tone. It can determine the mood of a populace and can instantly frame a story in a reader's mind. It can be not only a place but a time as well, and can be as narrow and specific as a single city street or as broad and encompassing as an entire country. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is set four years after the First World War in New York City, a time and backdrop that acts as a sixth main character to the novel itself. It provides the rationale behind the wild a crazy lifestyle many of the novel's characters embrace after many years of great strife. It provides a common link between characters that may otherwise not have had one, bonding the individuals and the country in a way only great turmoil could. Most importantly, it began the spinning of the web of lies that would eventually lead to Gatsby's downfall and defeat.

When Nick Carraway first arrives in West Egg the large and extravagant parties of his enigmatic next-door neighbour Jay Gatsby have already been happening for some time. While these luxurious and expensive parties are later revealed to all be an attempt to gain the attention of Daisy Buchanan, they are still purported to have attracted the attention of nearly everyone in New York City, even going so far as to make the headlines  of newspapers. People desired good news. People wanted to celebrate, relax, and be joyful after the years of hardship that came with a grisly war that had at first been expected to only last a few months and had ended up lasting over four years. It is in this way the novel creates a portrait of jazz era New York, capturing that party-attitude of the time that dominated the span between the First and Second World Wars known as the "Roaring Twenties." It does this without mentioning jazz music or specifically having characters attend jazz club establishments. In this way the First World War acts as an ever-present spectre in the novel, rarely mentioned but its effects always felt. The War is like the eyes of optometrist Dr. T. J. Eckleburg on the billboard, ever present in the events of the novel while never participating in them. The Jazz-era attitudes are the reason that Gatsby's decadent parties are allowed to take place by so many, but underlying it all is still an air of suspicion regarding an every-present enemy the existed after the war. This is present in the party-goers suspicions of Gatsby and their ponderings over his nature as a war hero or a spy.

The shared experience of the First World War also provided a link of solidarity between characters that would otherwise have had none, most notably the central characters of Jay Gatsby and narrator Nick Carraway. Both Nick and Gatsby served together in the First World War, with Gatsby claiming to have been decorated as such before returning home and attending Oxford University, even going so far as to carry a medal from Montenegro with him to show Nick as proof of his tenure. All of this is a part of Gatsby's scheme to make himself seem trustworthy enough to Nick to make Nick think that it is okay to arrange a meeting between Daisy and Gatsby at his home for tea. This narrative of heroism is followed by Nick's introduction to Meyer Wolfshiem, who further cements Gatsby's trustworthiness by saying "Gatsby’s very careful about women. He would never so much as look at a friend’s wife[,]" (56). The deception works, as on page 51 Nick's internal monologue reads: "Then it was all true. I saw the skins of tigers flaming in his palace on the Grand Canal; I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with their crimson-lighted depths, the gnawings of his broken heart." However we will learn later that his past as an infantry soldier is not entirely fabricated, and it serves not only as a method to further Gatsby's means of obtaining Daisy but also further contrasts his character with that of Tom Buchanan. One of the many themes of the novel is the class divide between "New" money and "Old" money seen in the Twenties during a time of prosperity in which many who started poor, like Gatsby, could become rich. Gatsby's narrative regarding his time in the First World War reflects his lack of understanding of the difference between new money and old money. Tom Buchanan has no stories of being away, as old money trustees by and large did not go to war excepting those that were idealistic or wanting for adventure at its height. While James Gatz claimed to be being promoted to a Major in the Allied Forces, Tom Buchanan was playing polo at Yale. Despite his efforts to sell his story, Gatsby misunderstands part of the fundamental nature of the old money he claims to be. Regardless, this forged connection the circumstance of the War brings to Nick and Gatsby is one of the reasons that Nick does agree to set Daisy up with Gatsby. In addition to having witnessed Tom cheating on Daisy with Myrtle Wilson not long previous, Nick now has a certainly brothers-in-arms association with Gatsby that helps him identify with him and helps him make his decision in setting up his married cousin with his neighbour Gatsby. This is a turning point in the novel, and the circumstance upon which all other events are hinged.

More than anything, the First World War acted as a catalyst for Gatsby meeting a woman like Daisy to begin with. "But he knew that he was in Daisy’s house by a colossal accident. However glorious might be his future as Jay Gatsby, he was at present a penniless young man without a past, and at any moment the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders[,]" (111). The War and the uniform of it served as a equalizer between the rich and the poor, each looking the same when pressed into a garb that was not allowed to show their class and wealth or poverty. The infantry uniform served as a disguise or cloak that allowed Gatsby access into Daisy's world, where he had first intended merely " [take] what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously," (111) but instead found himself in love and at the start of a quest to become everything that he had purported to be in order to be worthy of Daisy in his own mind.

Although taking place four years after the First World War, it influences the plot, setting, and characters of The Great Gatsby in such an important way that the events of the novel would likely not have taken place without it. It set the ball rolling in allowing a commoner like James Gatz to meet a seduce a socialite such as Daisy Fay. In its aftermath it created the pervasive social attitude necessary to accommodate the wild parties which Gatsby used to try and attract Daisy's attention across the bay in East Egg, and it was the shared experience of the War (and Gatsby's possible fabrication of it) that allowed Nick to finally resolve himself to setting Gatsby up with Daisy and reuniting them after four years apart. The effects of the First World War are omnipresent within the text, drenching every action and deed until the characters lose all agency in their actions and become almost victims of circumstance, transforming the novel from a simple romance novel to an opus about a tumultuous time in American history. Gatsby and Daisy's romance then became one both created and destroyed by the circumstance of the War, a circumstance that was far outside their command or control.