Scott Fitzgerald novel has a tone of irony in it. Gatsby was neither great, nor Gatsby. He is a crooked bootlegger who keeps company with Meyer Wolfsheim, the man who fixed the 1919 World Series. He has committed numerous crimes in order to attain the love of a materialistic woman who happens to be another man's wife! These obvious facts raise the question, "What is so Great About Gatsby?" Fitzgerald himself tells us through Nick Carraway, the narrator of this novel just how great Gatsby is. " "They're a rotten crowd'. 'You're worth the whole damn bunch put together" " (Fitzgerald, 162). (Abbott).
We think of Gatsby as great, because of his dream. Jay Gatsby, born James Gatz, had the dream of becoming something more than he was. When James was taken under the wing of Dan Cody, a product of the silver fields, he got that opportunity. Now Jay Gatsby and a young officer at Camp Taylor in 1917, he fell in love with Daisy, then Daisy Fay. He was sent overseas, and she had eventually given him up and married Tom Buchanan, and had a daughter. When Gatsby finally returned from Europe he decided to win Daisy back. His first step was to buy a house in West Egg. From here he could look across the bay to the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. In an effort to "run into her", Gatsby begins throwing large, extravagant parties at his home. When she never comes to any of them, he asks Nick, her distant cousin, to arrange a meeting between two. It is during the conversation between Gatsby and Nick that we are told about Gatsby's dream of once again being with Daisy. Gatsby has been playing this dream over in his head for the past five years. He wants nothing more than for Daisy to say to Tom, her husband, that she never loved him. Nick himself tells us that while he disapproved of Gatsby, he was a noble man for holding onto his dream.
An article appeared in the New York Times in 2002 written on the subject of Jay Gatsby entitled "Jay Gatsby, Dreamer, Criminal, Jazz Age Rogue, Is a Man for Our Times".