Discuss if The Great Gatsby is a sordid tale of adultery, deception and murder.

I certainly think that this could be a read of the novel.
Fitzgerald's work does involve adultery, plenty of deception, and murder on many levels. These
elements are present. Yet, I think that all of these elements fit into a larger schematic in
terms of what Fitzgerald is seeking to articulate. Fitzgerald is writing about the Jazz Age of
the 1920s. He is seeking to bring out a vivid picture of how individuals acted in this time
period. The shallow nature of social pursuits in a context where people used one another as means
to ends as opposed to ends in ofthemselves are both conditions that Fitzgerald sees as part of
the time period. In creating the worlds of East and West Egg, Fitzgerald seeks to make a
statement about this time period in American History. In what Eliot would call the "objective
correlative" (defining image), the murder, deception, and adultery that Fitzgerald displays is
more reflective of the time period than in anything salacious.