The Great Gatsby for English learners: level, words and how to read it

What the book is about

Summer 1922, Long Island, near New York. Nick Carraway rents a small house next to the mansion of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire who throws enormous parties every weekend that nobody seems to have been invited to.

Across the bay lives Nick’s cousin Daisy with her rich, arrogant husband Tom. Gatsby and Daisy knew each other years ago, and slowly Nick understands that all of Gatsby’s wealth and parties have one goal: to win her back.

Themes

• The American Dream. Can money buy happiness, love and a new identity? Gatsby believes it can.
• Old money and new money. Inherited wealth on one side of the bay, self-made fortunes on the other, and a social gap that money alone does not close.
• The past. Gatsby is sure you can repeat the past. The whole novel tests that belief.
• The Jazz Age. Glamour, parties and excess on the surface, carelessness and emptiness underneath.

How hard is The Great Gatsby to read in English?

How many unknown words will you meet? With a vocabulary of about 2,000 words, roughly 15 in every hundred, since those words cover 84.9% of the text. With 5,000 words it is about 9 in a hundred, with 10,000 about 5. Character names are not counted.

Measured by vocabulary alone, the book is B2–C1: that is the level at which almost every word is already familiar (why 98% matters). Tap-to-translate covers the rest, so you can start at B2. It is slightly harder than Little Women and slightly easier than Anne of Green Gables.

What is hard: Fitzgerald’s lyrical, figurative style, where a single sentence can hold several metaphors, some 1920s American expressions (Gatsby’s famous “old sport”) and a few long descriptive passages. What helps: the novel is short (about five hours), sentences are fairly short on average, there is plenty of dialogue, and the English is much closer to today’s than in the 19th-century classics.

Our take: B2 with tap-to-translate (B2–C1 by vocabulary). The vocabulary is manageable; the real challenge is the style. A great choice if you want literature, not just a plot.

Words to know before you start

The book’s own vocabulary: frequent in this text, much less common elsewhere. Ten minutes with this list makes the opening chapters smoother.

How to read it in the original

1. Read chapter 1 twice. It introduces almost every main character and the setting; everything else builds on it.
2. Do not translate every image. When a sentence is poetic, understand the feeling first and the exact words later.
3. Read a chapter a day. Nine chapters of about 5,400 words each: the whole book in under two weeks.
4. Reread the last page. It is one of the most quoted endings in American literature and makes more sense the second time.

The first line

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

vulnerableeasily hurt

adjective

Tap a highlighted word

Nick presents himself as someone who does not judge others. As the story goes on, it is worth asking how far you can trust him.

Frequently asked questions