Set in the 1920s, The Great Gatsby is an American masterpiece, and the story, entirely authentic to the Jazz Age, reveals themes universal to any other American era. Furthermore, in many ways, the novel, published in 1925, created a universal picture of the decade, a paradoxically pessimistic and optimist picture. As Fitzgerald wrote: "It eluded us then, but it doesn't matter: tomorrow we will run faster, we will stretch out our arms even further... boats against the current, pushed back incessantly into the past." Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby also resulted in two films. In 1949, Elliot Nugent directed The Great Gatsby with Alan Ladd as Jay Gatsby and a cast that included Macdonald Carey and Shelly Winters. The 1974 version directed by Jack Clayton starred Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby and Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan, and more accurately represented the themes expressed by Fitzgerald in the novel. Fitzgerald and his audience. Gatsby throws wild parties, at which he doesn't know most of the guests present. The parties last until the early hours of the morning as guests run around in a drunken stupor that ultimately becomes a metaphor for the superficiality and purposelessness of discarded or forgotten pasts, while alcohol symbolizes the decadence of society American. In recreating the sense of disillusionment that followed World War I, the film also graphically depicts the Prohibition era, Gatsby's involvement in bootlegging, and other infamous crimes related to his association with Meyer Wolfshiem. On a larger scale, the film manifests one of the profound themes of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby as well as o...... middle of paper ...... exemplary and monastic figure - who embodied his generation, which had not kept his promise, that his story provided a warning. . . None of the obituaries predicted that Fitzgerald would be resurrected as Adonis, the beautiful young man worshiped by the goddess of love. deep self-evaluation. Is it possible to live only on dreams? Fitzgerald's insightful story asks these questions, but it is up to the reader/viewer to determine their own answers, answers that shape their own destiny book and film The Great Gatsby provide the student of history with some probing questions about values, society, and ways in which eras of American history shape the historical mores and perceptions of a generation.