Comparison
The Great Gatsby vs Their Eyes Were Watching God
How The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurstoncompare on reading level, grade placement, curriculum overlap, and shared themes — derived from primary-source citations on each book’s ReadingList page.
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Lexile
- 1070L
- Grades
- 10–12
- Published
- 1925
- Pages
- 180
- Genre
- Literary Fiction
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
- Lexile
- 1080L
- Grades
- 10–12
- Published
- 1937
- Pages
- 193
- Genre
- Literary Fiction
At a glance
- Lexile differential
- 10L (The Great Gatsby: 1070L · Their Eyes Were Watching God: 1080L)
- Grade-range overlap
- Grades 10–12
- Year-of-publication gap
- 12 years (1925 vs 1937)
- Page-count gap
- 13 pages (180 vs 193)
- Shared curricula
- 6 of 6
- Shared themes
- 0 of 11
Reading-level difference
The 10-point Lexile gap puts Their Eyes Were Watching God 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 The Great Gatsby
- American Dream
- wealth and class
- obsession
- illusion and reality
- Jazz Age
- unrequited love
Only Their Eyes Were Watching God
- African American womanhood
- marriage and autonomy
- voice and silence
- love
- Black folk culture