A great deal of the adulterous and scandalous behavior described in The Great Gatsby is reflective of F. Scott Fitzgerald's personal life at the time in which he wrote the novel. The Great Gatsby, a novel written by Fitzgerald, includes many autobiographical elements of the author's life. On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story about disillusioned love between a man and a woman. However, the novel also portrays the American Dream of the 1920's and how it begins to crumble, much like what was happening in Fitzgerald's real world. Fitzgerald explored many aspects of his own emotions and experiences through the characters he created in The Great Gatsby, specifically Jay Gatsby and his relationship with the woman he devotes his life to pursuing; Daisy Buchanan. Both Fitzgerald, the man, and Gatsby, the character, share in their ambition to achieve the American Dream through the relentless pursuit of a "perfect" woman whose unworthiness leads to the disintegration of that dream. .
Jay Gatsby, the central character created by Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby grew up admiring the rich and has a strong desire for financial success, much like the author himself. Gatsby and Fitzgerald are both men who idolize wealth and luxury and who fall in love with a beautiful woman from a higher class. Gatsby's admiration of the rich is rationalized in Nick's thought, "I think that voice held him most, with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn't be over dreamed-that voice was a deathless song" (Fitzgerald 96). Fitzgerald suggests that Daisy, like all upper class, are the only ones who can "live forever" because they have a life full of leisure and without stress to make them age. Daisy seems to be partially based on Fitzgerald's wife. In his article, "Fitzgerald as Gatsby", Davis writes, "The ambition that both Fitzgerald and Gatsby share brings them into the lives of the women they love" (Davis).