Comparison
Beloved vs The Great Gatsby
How Beloved by Toni Morrison 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.
Beloved
Toni Morrison
- Lexile
- 870L
- Grades
- 11–12
- Published
- 1987
- Pages
- 324
- Genre
- Literary Fiction
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Lexile
- 1070L
- Grades
- 10–12
- Published
- 1925
- Pages
- 180
- Genre
- Literary Fiction
At a glance
- Lexile differential
- 200L (Beloved: 870L · The Great Gatsby: 1070L)
- Grade-range overlap
- Grades 11–12
- Year-of-publication gap
- 62 years (1987 vs 1925)
- Page-count gap
- 144 pages (324 vs 180)
- Shared curricula
- 6 of 5
- Shared themes
- 0 of 12
Reading-level difference
The 200-point Lexile gap puts The Great Gatsby roughly a meaningful step harder than Beloved. 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 Beloved
- slavery and its aftermath
- motherhood
- memory and trauma
- identity
- community
- the supernatural
Only The Great Gatsby
- American Dream
- wealth and class
- obsession
- illusion and reality
- Jazz Age
- unrequited love