The Song Сode in The Great Gatsby

The article commemorating the 100th anniversary of the iconic American novel explores the citation of song lyrics in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gats- by and despite the evident focus on jazz elements, far too little attention has been paid to the songs embedded in the narrative. Scholars analyzing the songs in The Great Gatsby generally agree on their role in evoking the novel’s jazz atmosphere: jazz here serves both as a metaphor for the fragmentation, dislocation, and emp- tiness of modern existence and as a key device amplifying the novel’s central themes — the illusion of the American Dream, the perils of Roaring Twenties hedonism, and the personal tragedy of the protagonist. It also functions as a com- positional tool. The article, however, reveals another significant purpose behind the inclusion of song excerpts: they deepen Fitzgerald’s technique of “double vision,” where the author refrains from moral judgment and the narrator hesitates to condemn Gatsby, portraying him alternately as a nouveau riche gangster and a grand romantic. Simultaneously, the songs complicate the novel’s structure and expand its semantic field. Fitzgerald deliberately incorporates real-world period songs (and one fictional Russian melody) not only to evoke the Jazz Age ambi- ance but also to construct an additional layer of meaning. This layer aligns not just with the narrator’s emotional perception of events but also metaphorically traces Gatsby’s entire arc — from exotic millionaire to disillusioned dreamer to tragic demise.