"The Great Gatsby" represents the age of jazz: lights, parties, cool cars and cocktail dresses. However, behind the tenderness of the night lies its darkness, the sense of loneliness that can strangle even the most promising life. Nick Carraway, narrator of the novel, is a young man who moves to New York in the summer of 1922. He rents a house on prestigious and dreamy Long Island, teeming with rich people busy celebrating each other. A neighbor of Nick is the mysterious Jay Gatsby, who lives in a huge and flashy house, filling it every Saturday night with guests invited to his extravagant parties. Yet he lives in desperate loneliness and will fall foolishly in love with Nick's married cousin, Daisy. The American myth decomposes page after page, keeping all the glitter of the facade but also showing its fragility and soft underbelly. Just as was happening to Fitzgerald himself, a former casanova and former alcoholic struggling with the mystery of an existence now doomed to final dissolution.