Jay Gatsby is the central, enigmatic focus of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. When the reader first meets Gatsby, it is through the description of Nick Carraway, who notes that his neighbor of the less fashionable (i.e. 'new money') area of West Egg, Long Island has purchased a palatial mansion. Every weekend, people in motor cars come to Gatsby's parties; every Monday, the staff cleans up the debris. No luxury is too great for Gatsby: "every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York… There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour, if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb" (Fitzgerald 3). The source of Gatsby's wealth is vague and gradually it emerges that he made his fortune as a bootlegger. Gatsby tries to affect a posture of being part of old, aristocratic wealth. He claims to be an Oxford man although he likely never went to school and calls Carraway "old sport." However, this is a sham, just like the uncut (i.e., unread) classics in his library, put out for show. The books symbolize the facade of Gatsby's persona "See...It's a bona fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella's a regular Belasco. It's a triumph. What thoroughness!...
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