Titles can shift as a writer refines a work, signaling how they want readers to approach it. The Great Gatsby went through several working titles during its revision, and one of the late-stage options was Under the Red, White, and Blue. This choice foregrounds American symbolism and the clash between national ideals and the Jazz Age reality, which mirrors the novel’s exploration of wealth, desire, and disillusionment. The Lime Tree and Jazz Age Night aren’t known to have been late-stage titles, and The Great Gatsby is the final published name. Seeing this as a late candidate helps explain how Fitzgerald was honing the book’s thematic frame just before locking in the final title.

Max Perkins looked for a strong, convincing center to the novel. In the first draft, Gatsby’s inner life and motivations weren’t fully formed—his backstory, dreams, and the forces shaping his choices needed clearer definition. Because the character’s depth anchors the story’s themes of ambition, illusion, and the American dream, Perkins pressed to make Gatsby more concretely drawn: a definite past, a visible motive for Daisy, and a more tangible emotional arc. When Gatsby’s character becomes fully realized, the book’s emotional resonance and moral dimension come through, guiding the ending and the narrative's power. The other aspects—prose style, an unsatisfying ending, or an exotic setting—weren’t the primary concern Perkins identified; he focused on shaping Gatsby himself so the novel could truly endure as a character-driven work.

Public celebration of personal and artistic freedom defined Millay's persona at her peak. She became a modern symbol of independence, challenging social norms about gender, marriage, and sexuality, and she used her poetry and public voice to champion freedom of thought and self-determination. This image of a liberated, nonconforming woman and poet carried through her famous circles in the 1920s and her outspoken stances on liberty and individual rights. That makes her a spokesperson for freedom, rather than for materialism, tradition, or state control.

The key idea here is that Nick reads Gatsby’s death as a total, sweeping destruction rather than a small personal setback. When Nick describes the moment as a holocaust, he’s signaling that Gatsby’s life, his grand dream, and the social world that supported it are wiped out in one devastating act. The term conveys scale and finality—not just the end of a single life, but the collapse of a complex illusion about reinvention and the American Dream that Gatsby had been pursuing. The word complete reinforces that nothing remains intact—the dream, the identity Gatsby crafted, and the fragile social order around him are all erased in that instant. Other phrasings lean toward a quieter, more intimate sense of loss or shift focus to the setting rather than Gatsby’s life. They don’t capture the same sense of total collapse and the moral weight Nick senses in the aftermath.