In what ways is The Great Gatsby an autobiographical novel?Where can you find evidence of Fitzgerald's life in the work?

The novel is not autobiography, but many of Fitzgerald's
personal circumstances and experiences are reflected in
it.

Many of Fitzgerald's biographers, as well as Fitzgerald
himself, noted that Fitzgerald lived his life with a kind of divided personality--the
romantic who sought an exciting, glittering lifestyle and the Midwesterner who still
believed in traditional American values. These two very different aspects of Fitzgerald
are reflected in Gatsby, the romantic dreamer, and Nick Carraway, the realist and voice
of Midwestern integrity.

Many of Fitzgerald's experiences
are incorporated into Jay Gatsby and his former self, Jimmy Gatz. Like Jimmy, Fitzgerald
as a boy rejected the circumstances of his own birth. He sometimes fantasized that he
was a foundling, that he really had been born into a family very different from his
own--one of wealth and social standing (even royalty). Jimmy found his father to be an
embarrassment; Fitzgerald had often been embarrassed by his eccentric
mother.

Also like Gatsby, Fitzgerald had served as a
lieutenant in World War I and had met the woman of his dreams, Zelda Sayre, while
stationed in the South. Many similarities exist between Zelda of Montgomery, Alabama,
and Daisy Fay of Louisville; like Daisy, Zelda was beautiful and popular, much pursued
by the young officers stationed at the nearby army camp. Fitzgerald visited Zelda at her
father's fine home, just as Gatsby spent time with Daisy in her father's beautiful
house.

Zelda would not marry Fitzgerald until he had money
and could support her, but Fitzgerald's experience with poor boys pursuing rich girls, a
major element in the novel as Gatsby longs for Daisy, involved Fitzgerald's relationship
while in college with another young woman, Ginevra King. She was from an enormously
wealthy family in Chicago, and Fitzgerald's own family and lack of wealth made him
unacceptable as a suitor. Fitzgerald biographers have written of an incident that
occurred when Fitzgerald went to visit Ginevra at her family home and was treated coldly
by her family: "Poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls," he reportedly was
told, and their relationship ended. The same social class distinctions that existed
between Genevra and Fitzgerald are examined in detail in The Great Gatsby,
and the rich upper class is condemned as being snobbish and
amoral.

Finally, the novel is rich in its depiction of the
Roaring Twenties as the era played out, especially in New York. Fitzgerald and Zelda
lived in New York after their marriage, caught up in the frenetic, excessive lifestyle,
spending money as fast, or faster, than Fitzgerald could earn it. The automobiles,
music, fashions, occupations, wild parties, and gorgeous mansions detailed in the novel
were part of their daily lives. (Fitzgerald himself named the era "The Jazz Age.") For a
while, he and Zelda lived in a fine home in Great Neck, New York, on Long Island, their
estate being a place very much like Gatsby's West Egg estate, the scene of his opulent
parties where all manner of guests showed up.

The
Great Gatsby is a work of fiction, but clearly it was born of Scott
Fitzgerald's own life and many specific experiences. It is impossible to imagine that
anyone else could have written it.