F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925 · First edition text, 1925 (US public domain since 2021)
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby (1925) has narrator Nick Carraway watch Jay Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy Buchanan collapse across one Long Island summer. The Critical Thinker reading companion in IO reader questions Nick’s self-description as tolerant and reserved from the very first page — an assumption the rest of the novel keeps testing.
Read the opening in Reels
PART I · PARAGRAPH
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
The Great Gatsby · F. Scott Fitzgerald
Interactive demo — real text, web replica of the reading view
Read it with a reading companion
Surfaces hidden assumptions and second-order implications in the text.
Read it with the Critical Thinker in IO reader.
The facts
| Length | about 48,200 words · 2,580 sentences |
|---|---|
| In sentence cards | about 172 minutes |
| Difficulty | gentle |
| 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. |
| Themes | Chapters 1–3 · Chapters 4–6 · Chapters 7–9 |
Is The Great Gatsby hard to read?
No — it's short and carefully paced, one of the gentler reads in this batch. In sentence cards it's about 172 minutes.
Which translation is this?
None needed — the 1925 English text, public domain in the US since 2021.
How long is The Great Gatsby?
About 48,200 words across nine chapters; roughly 2,580 sentences.
Read The Great Gatsby in IO reader
Colophon
Text: First edition text, 1925 (US public domain since 2021), from Project Gutenberg (pg:64317). Cover: Standard Ebooks CC0 cover, f-scott-fitzgerald/the-great-gatsby. Reviewed 2026-09-04.