1.How did Fitzgerald present the theme of honesty in the novel?

Honesty is does not seem to determine which characters are sympathetic and which are not in this novel in quite the same way that it does in others. Nick is able to admire Gatsby despite his knowledge of the man’s illegal dealings and bootlegging. Ironically, it is the corrupt Daisy who takes pause at Gatsby’s sordid past. Her indignation at his “dishonesty,” however, is less moral than class-based. Her sense of why Gatsby should not behave in an immoral manner is based on what she expects from members of her milieu, rather than what she believes to be intrinsically right. The standards for honesty and morality seem to be dependent on class and gender in this novel. Tom finds his wife’s infidelity intolerable, however, he does not hesitate to lie to her about his own affair.

2.How did Fitzgerald reflect the woman questions at that time?

In some respects, Fitzgerald writes about gender roles in a quite conservative manner. In his novel, men work to earn money for the maintenance of the women. Men are dominant over women, especially in the case of Tom, who asserts his physical strength to subdue them. The only hint of a role reversal is in the pair of Nick and Jordan. Jordan’s androgynous name and cool, collected style masculinize her more than any other female character. However, in the end, Nick does exert his dominance over her by ending the relationship. The women in the novel are an interesting group, because they do not divide into the traditional groups of Mary Magdalene and Madonna figures, instead, none of them are pure. Myrtle is the most obviously sensual, but the fact that Jordan and Daisy wear white dresses only highlights their corruption.

3.How to understand that Gatsby’s personal life has assumed a magnitude as a “cultural-historical allegory” for the nation?

Gatsby’s life follows a clear pattern: at first, a dream, then a disenchantment, and finally a sense of failure and despair. In this, Gatsby’s personal experience approximates the whole of the American experience up to the first few decades of the twentieth century. America had been fresh and green and new, had “pandered to the last and greatest of all human dreams” and promised something like “the orgiastic future” for humanity. Now the virgin forests have vanished and made way for a modern civilization, the only fitting symbol of which is the “valley of ashes,” the living hell. Here modern men live in sterility and meaninglessness and futility as best illustrated by Gatsby’s essentially pointless parties. The crowds hardly know their hose; many come and go without invitation. The music, the laughter and the faces, all blurred as one confused mass, signify the purposelessness and loneliness of the party-goers beneath their masks of relaxation and joviality. The shallowness of Daisy whose voice is “full of money,” the restless wickedness of Tom, the representative of the egocentric, careless rich, and Gatsby who is, on the one hand, charmingly innocent enough to believe that the past can be recovered and resurrected, but is on the other hand, both corrupt and corrupting, tragically convinced of the power of money, however it is made, and in addition, the behavior of these and other people like the Wilsons—all clearly denote the vanishing of the great expectations which the first settlement of the American continent had inspired. The hope is gone; despair and doom have set in. Thus Gatsby’s personal life has assumed a magnitude as a “cultural-historical allegory” for the nation. Here, then, lies the greatest intellectual achievement that Fitzgerald ever achieved.