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Explained in six sentences

The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925.

Fitzgerald's short novel of longing and new money, read closely and charted from its own words.

Read it free at Project GutenbergHow we drew the figures

48,402 words · 9 chapters · About 3 h 23 min · Spoiler-light

The bookFacts
  • AuthorF. Scott Fitzgerald
  • First published1925
  • Words48,402
  • Chapters9
  • Reading time3 h 23 min

Public domain in the US: first published 1925.

In six sentences

The Great Gatsby, in our own words.

Read in full · Checked against the text · No ending revealed

  1. The Great Gatsby looks like a story about glamorous parties, but it is really about longing, and about a man who reinvents himself to win back a lost past.
  2. Fitzgerald tells it through Nick Carraway, a newcomer to Long Island who is both inside the action and oddly apart from it, across nine compact chapters set mostly over one summer.
  3. The central tension lies between Gatsby's dazzling, self-made fortune and the settled, careless privilege of Tom and Daisy Buchanan across the bay.
  4. Its theme is the American promise that anyone can remake their life, and the book quietly asks whether money can ever buy belonging, respect or love.
  5. Our counts show how long Fitzgerald keeps his hero offstage, with only 13 of Gatsby's 275 name mentions in the first fifth of the book, while narrator Nick is named just 34 times.
  6. A commercial disappointment in 1925 that found a huge readership after copies were sent to American troops in World War II, it endures for its compact, luminous prose.

Where and when

West Egg and East Egg on Long Island, and New York City, in the summer of 1922.

  • First publisherCharles Scribner's Sons
  • EditionGutenberg #64317

From the text itself

Three figures, counted from the words on the page.

Every figure is computed by our scripts from the 48,402-word Project Gutenberg text. None is copied from a study guide.

The mood of the wording, The Great GatsbyAbove the dotted line: brighter
Emotional arc of The Great GatsbySmoothed sentiment of the wording across 40 equal parts of The Great Gatsby, from the opening to the ending. Labelled points: Ch 2: a rowdy apartment party; Ch 5–6: reunion glow, then backstory; Ch 7: a hot day ends badly; Ch 8: Gatsby remembers courting Daisy.Ch 2Ch 5–6Ch 7Ch 8OpeningMiddleEndingEmotional arc of The Great GatsbySmoothed sentiment of the wording across 40 equal parts of The Great Gatsby, from the opening to the ending. Labelled points: Ch 2: a rowdy apartment party; Ch 5–6: reunion glow, then backstory; Ch 7: a hot day ends badly; Ch 8: Gatsby remembers courting Daisy.Ch 2Ch 5–6Ch 7Ch 8OpeningMiddleEndingEmotional arc of The Great GatsbySmoothed sentiment of the wording across 40 equal parts of The Great Gatsby, from the opening to the ending. Labelled points: Ch 2: a rowdy apartment party; Ch 5–6: reunion glow, then backstory; Ch 7: a hot day ends badly; Ch 8: Gatsby remembers courting Daisy.Ch 2Ch 5–6Ch 7Ch 8OpeningMiddleEnding
  1. Ch 2A rowdy apartment party
  2. Ch 5–6Reunion glow, then backstory
  3. Ch 7A hot day ends badly
  4. Ch 8Gatsby remembers courting Daisy

We split the novel into 40 equal slices of about 1,200 words and score each by the average VADER sentiment of its sentences, from −1 (most negative) to +1 (most positive); the line is a five-slice moving average, and the dotted line is neutral. The book is short, so each slice is only a few pages and single scenes can move the line. It measures the tone of the words, not what happens.

Computed by us from the Project Gutenberg text · VADER sentiment · 48,402 words

Who is named whenNames per 5% of the book
  • Jay Gatsby275
  • Tom Buchanan195
  • Daisy Buchanan187
  • Jordan Baker100
  • Nick Carraway34

This chart counts how often five central characters are named in each twentieth of the book, about 2,400 words, including nicknames and titles such as Mr Gatsby and Jay for Gatsby. Nick tells the story as I, so his own count looks small.

Counted by us from the Gutenberg text · 20 slices of about 2,400 words

Who shares a paragraphLine width = paragraphs together
Character network of The Great GatsbyEight most-named characters. Strongest links: Daisy and Gatsby (37 paragraphs); Daisy and Tom (36 paragraphs); Gatsby and Tom (25 paragraphs); Jordan and Tom (16 paragraphs).GatsbyTomDaisyJordanWilsonMyrtleNickWolfshiem

Lines join the eight most-named characters, and a thicker line means more paragraphs that name both of them; pairs named together in fewer than three paragraphs are left out. Tom links the two halves of the cast, from the Buchanans' house to the Wilsons' garage.

Counted by us from the Gutenberg text · paragraph co-occurrence

The cast we counted

8
  • 01Jay GatsbyMysterious host of lavish parties on West Egg.275 names
  • 02Tom BuchananDaisy's husband, a rich, forceful former college football star.195 names
  • 03Daisy BuchananNick's cousin, charming and restless, living in East Egg.187 names
  • 04Jordan BakerDaisy's friend, a cool and competitive golfer.100 names
  • 05George WilsonWorn-out garage owner in the valley of ashes.60 names
  • 06Myrtle WilsonGeorge Wilson's restless wife, who is seeing Tom.42 names
  • 07Nick CarrawayThe narrator, a Midwesterner who rents the house next to Gatsby's.34 names
  • 08Meyer WolfshiemGatsby's shadowy business associate in New York.32 names

Key terms

Old money and new money
Families rich for generations versus people who made their fortunes recently; the novel places them on opposite sides of a bay.
Bootlegger
Someone who made or sold alcohol illegally while it was banned in the United States.
Unreliable narrator
A storyteller whose account may be partial or biased; readers often debate how far to trust Nick.
Valley of ashes
The bleak dumping ground between Long Island and the city, watched over by an oculist's faded billboard.
The green light
A light at the end of Daisy's dock that Gatsby gazes at from across the water.

What we read to write this

  1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott FitzgeraldProject Gutenberg
  2. The Not-So-Great GatsbyLibrary of Congress
  3. The Great GatsbyEncyclopaedia Britannica
  4. Celebrating The Great Gatsby at 100Princeton University Library

Our own explanation and figures, written with AI assistance (Claude, by Anthropic) after reading the sources above and checked against the novel's text. No text or images were copied. Published 2026-10-18.

Read the real thing

The Great Gatsby is free to read.

It is public domain in the US. Project Gutenberg has the full text as a web page, an ebook and plain text.