How Long to Read The Great Gatsby (a F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925)

By A. F. Scott Fitzgerald

How Long Does it Take to Read The Great Gatsby (a F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925)?

It takes the average reader 2 hours and 23 minutes to read The Great Gatsby (a F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925) by A. F. Scott Fitzgerald

Assuming a reading speed of 250 words per minute. Learn more

Description

The Great Gatsby is a novel that needs no introduction for a certain generation of American readers. Long taught as required reading in American schools, critics have consistently held it up alongside Moby Dick, Huck Finn, and To Kill a Mockingbird as perhaps the quintessential Great American Novel. Nick Carraway is a young Midwestern man who freshly arrived in New York to make his fortune. He rents a shabby apartment in Long Island next door to a sumptuous mansion: the home of the mysterious and wealthy Jay Gatsby. Carraway spends time catching up with his distant cousin Daisy and her industry-baron husband Tom before being invited to one of Gatsby's wildly lavish weekend parties. There he meets Jordan, a flapper, and a gold star, and an intricate web of romances and betrayals begins to unfold. The novel is a colorful study of America's Jazz Age--a term said to be coined by Fitzgerald himself--complete with wealthy socialites living in hedonistic abandon, libertine flappers, jazz bands, roaring roadsters, and greasy speakeasies populated with shady grifters. Contrasted against the glamorous lives of wealthy socialites is the entrenched lower class, who live in gray, dingy squalor among smoldering ash-heaps. Fitzgerald uses the setting to examine the American Dream: the idea that anyone in America can achieve success through hard work and dedication. Gatsby has spent his life reaching for his dream. Some say he's already achieved it. But has he? Is the dream even real for the hard-working poor that Gatsby and Tom race past in their glittering cars on the way to the decadent city? Fitzgerald wrote much of his real-life into the novel. Like Carraway, he was a Midwesterner educated at an Ivy-league school who went to live on Long Island. Despite his meager finances he hobnobbed with socialites and spent his career struggling for money to maintain the grand style his romantic interests were accustomed to. The cover art, titled Celestial Eyes, was commissioned by Francis Cugat, who completed it before the novel was finished. The huge eyes gazing down on the blazing city so moved Fitzgerald that he wrote them into the story. Fitzgerald saw the novel as a purely artistic work, free of the pulp pandering required by his shorter commissions--but despite that, contemporary reviews were mixed, and it sold poorly. Fitzgerald thought it a failure and died believing the novel to be fatally obscure. Only during World War II did it come back to the public consciousness, buoyed by the support of a ring of writers and critics and printed as an Armed Service Edition to be sent to soldiers on the front. Now it is an American classic.

How long is The Great Gatsby (a F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925)?

The Great Gatsby (a F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925) by A. F. Scott Fitzgerald is 142 pages long, and a total of 35,784 words.

This makes it 48% the length of the average book. It also has 44% more words than the average book.

How Long Does it Take to Read The Great Gatsby (a F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925) Aloud?

The average oral reading speed is 183 words per minute. This means it takes 3 hours and 15 minutes to read The Great Gatsby (a F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925) aloud.

What Reading Level is The Great Gatsby (a F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925)?

The Great Gatsby (a F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925) is suitable for students ages 10 and up.

Note that there may be other factors that effect this rating besides length that are not factored in on this page. This may include things like complex language or sensitive topics not suitable for students of certain ages.

When deciding what to show young students always use your best judgement and consult a professional.

Where Can I Buy The Great Gatsby (a F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925)?

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