In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald published his book, The Great Gatsby. Since then, the book's popularity has continued to grow, it is still taught in schools and has been made into a film twice. The book takes you through the adventure of a hopeless romantic who throws extravagant parties hoping that one day he will find someone who will help him find the girl he has always loved. Gatsby puts his lover, Daisy, on a pedestal and believes she is larger than life. Everything he does to win her over is ideally perfect, but not realistic. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald highlights the concept of idealism versus realism throughout the book. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was very intelligent and had a gift for writing, and his first writing appeared in a school newspaper when he was 13. When he was 15, his parents sent him to the Newman school in New Jersey. Subsequently, he attended Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. He joined their club Triangle and wrote scripts and lyrics for their musicals. He liked to party with his friends and ended up showing signs of an early drinking problem. When he attended a dance during his sophomore year of college, he met a 16-year-old girl named Jennifer. His father had told him that "poor boys don't marry rich girls." (The Great American Dreamer). He began to fail in school, so he decided to drop out and join the war and then imagined himself as a war hero. He attended a party while waiting to be sent to war and met his future wife Zelda Sayre, daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court justice. He eventually published his first book, This Side of Paradise, and it was very successful. He and Zelda were at the height of their lives... middle of paper... reams, imagination and reality. Fitzgerald did a fantastic job creating this book, especially because there is a little bit of himself and the things he did in his life that he portrayed in the book. The real reason this is still taught in schools today is because it is so dynamic. It teaches many lessons and provides information about what it was like to live in the 1920s. Show the reader why: "Rich girls don't marry poor boys." It shows the reader what it is like to be so obsessed with something or someone that the idea or dream they are creating of being with them can never come true because it is so unrealistic. It all still relates to today's day and age. Having been written in the 1920s, this book is able to connect with people even today because everyone has that one person they can never be with at some point in their life. The Great Gatsby is truly a fantastic book.