"Of what might have been a wonderland we have made a wasteland." This idea is crucial to the reader's understanding of `The Great Gatsby' in that it embodies the novel's concept of an underlying sense of immorality, and further helps to display Fitzgerald's feelings towards the moral failure of the Roaring Twenties and the American Dream. Fitzgerald himself said, "all the stories that came into my head had a touch of disaster in them - the lovely creatures in my novels went to ruin," and this I believe to be true of `The Great Gatsby' as all the characters, concepts and images, which initially appear to be glamorous, ultimately are either tinged with or are full symbols of corruption. The very fact that Nick himself is telling the story in the past too, having already come `back from the East' reinforces this - he left the East with...