Comparison
1984 vs The Great Gatsby
How 1984 by George Orwell and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgeraldcompare on reading level, grade placement, curriculum overlap, and shared themes — derived from primary-source citations on each book’s ReadingList page.
1984
George Orwell
- Lexile
- 1090L
- Grades
- 9–12
- Published
- 1949
- Pages
- 328
- Genre
- Dystopian Fiction
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Lexile
- 1070L
- Grades
- 10–12
- Published
- 1925
- Pages
- 180
- Genre
- Literary Fiction
At a glance
- Lexile differential
- 20L (1984: 1090L · The Great Gatsby: 1070L)
- Grade-range overlap
- Grades 10–12
- Year-of-publication gap
- 24 years (1949 vs 1925)
- Page-count gap
- 148 pages (328 vs 180)
- Shared curricula
- 6 of 5
- Shared themes
- 0 of 12
Reading-level difference
The 20-point Lexile gap puts 1984 roughly in the same reading-difficulty tier as The Great Gatsby. Lexile differences below 50L typically reflect equivalent decoding load (sentence length + word frequency); differences above 200L cross developmental reading-band boundaries. More on how Lexile measures work →
Curriculum overlap
Both books appear in 6 shared curriculum frameworks:
Themes
Only 1984
- totalitarianism
- surveillance
- language and thought
- propaganda
- rebellion
- individual vs state
Only The Great Gatsby
- American Dream
- wealth and class
- obsession
- illusion and reality
- Jazz Age
- unrequited love