This collection of five Short Stories focused on the possibility of defeat up till the last paragraph, you are unsure if the protagonist is going to fulfill their dream or fail miserably. Stories are a typical Fitzgerald standard of tight writing: every word counts and moves the story forward to its conclusion. Two short stories were written before The Great Gatsby and the other three afterwords, but you see underlying themes and plot devices that he perfected in TGG throughout all of the stories: Light, water and the American Dream.