Not-so-great Gatsby

A century after The Great Gatsby first hit shelves, most of us are still missing the point, at least according to the BBC. For a novel that’s become literary shorthand for sequins, champagne towers, and party invites printed in gold foil, its deeper message is a whole lot darker, and way less Instagrammable.

Let’s rewind to April 1925, when F Scott Fitzgerald’s now-iconic book was first published to a chorus of critical shrugs. Even the glowing reviews missed the mark. Fitzgerald himself grumbled that “not one had the slightest idea what the book was about.” Despite being admired by literary heavyweights like Edith Wharton, most early readers chalked it up as a middling crime novel. One headline even called it a dud. Ouch.

Fast forward a few decades, and Gatsby’s fortunes finally changed, thanks, of all things, to World War II (morbid, we know). A whopping 155,000 copies were handed out to American soldiers as part of a wartime book campaign. Suddenly, Gatsby had a fresh fanbase, and as the American Dream became central to post-war identity, the book’s themes started to resonate.

By the ’60s, Gatsby was required reading. Then Hollywood stepped in with Robert Redford donning a pink suit in the 1974 film. The term “Gatsbyesque” was coined, and Jay Gatsby’s name got plastered on everything from cocktail bars to cologne. Even sandwiches. Yes, really, Google the “Gatsby sandwich” if you dare.

An accidental hit

But here’s the thing: Gatsby was never meant to be a vibe. He’s not just a charming host with a killer view of the bay – he’s also a deluded dreamer, a criminal, and a man clinging so hard to a fantasy that it destroys him. Naming your fancy hotel after him is like calling your dating app Frankenstein. You missed the point, buddy.

But the enduring misreadings of the novel aren’t just about Gatsby’s tragic glamour. A big part of the confusion comes from the narrator: Nick Carraway. He’s slippery, both judge and admirer, distant yet disturbingly close to the action. And we only see Gatsby through his eyes. That’s where the real richness lies, says literary scholar William Cain: Nick’s narrative is full of contradictions, and unpacking them is key to understanding what Fitzgerald was really doing.

Author Michael Farris Smith agrees. He wrote Nick, a prequel that imagines Carraway’s backstory, from World War I trenches to jazz-soaked Paris and the seedy back streets of New Orleans, before he lands in West Egg. Smith’s theory is that Nick is dealing with deep trauma and disillusionment, and it’s what shapes his detachment. In Gatsby’s tale, Nick isn’t just a bystander. He’s a haunted lens.

 

For Smith, like many readers, Gatsby didn’t click until later in life. The high school version felt like rich people whining. But in his twenties, living abroad and wrestling with identity, the book hit differently. Gatsby’s desperation, Nick’s confusion, and the fragile shimmer of dreams on the brink – they all made sense.

Maybe that’s Gatsby’s real magic. It evolves. Read it at 17, and it’s about parties. Read it at 30, and it’s about longing. Read it at 45, and it’s a full-blown existential crisis wrapped in beautiful prose.

That flexibility has fuelled a flood of new interpretations, especially since the book’s copyright expired in 2021. No more legal red tape means more Gatsby, everywhere: musicals (yes, two of them), immersive theatre, TV adaptations, and even a murder mystery starring Gatsby’s made-up little sister, Greta. There’s also a gender-flipped retelling with a female Jay Gatsby. Still waiting on the Muppets version, though.

And yet, for all this reinvention, the American Dream – the novel’s beating heart – remains as slippery as ever. Fitzgerald paints it as tantalising but brutal. Gatsby believes he can buy his way into the elite, but he’s never truly accepted. Cain points out that this critique still resonates: rigid class lines, the hollowness of meritocracy, and the price people pay to “make it” in America.

That dream, for many, feels more unreachable now than ever. Cain’s students, he says, often read the book with a kind of quiet sadness. The promise of success, the idea that effort equals reward – it’s not just the fictional Gatsby who’s disillusioned.

Blind spots

Of course, not everything about the novel has aged gracefully. Fitzgerald’s portrayal of race is cringeworthy at best, and the women are largely ornamental – vehicles for Gatsby’s desire, not characters in their own right. But modern adaptations are starting to fill in those gaps, challenging the book’s blind spots rather than ignoring them.

Ultimately, The Great Gatsby is a mirror – sometimes foggy, sometimes sharp – that reflects where we are and what we yearn for. It’s been misread, memeified, turned into party décor and perfume. But its power, oddly enough, has only grown.

Maybe the book’s greatest trick is this: every time you come back to it, you discover something new. And every time, it asks the same quietly devastating question – what happens when the dream doesn’t deliver?

So next time you get invited to a Gatsby-themed soirée, maybe skip the sequins. And read the book again instead. It’s probably not the novel you remember.