The Great Gatsby: 100 years old and still topical today
In April, “The Great Gatsby” – a classic of modern American literature – celebrated the 100th anniversary of its publication, providing an opportunity for a critical literary and cultural look at the topicality of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. One important question is: What does the word “great” mean at a time of “Make America Great Again” – the slogan propagated by the current US Administration headed by President Donald Trump?
In its cultural perception, “The Great Gatsby” is often understood as a paradigmatic example of the literary presentation of the American Dream. This is symbolised in the novel by the green light in the harbour which will not leave Gatsby in peace, just as little as his memory of a failed love affair. Although the concept of the American Dream was not coined until 1931 – in James Truslow Adams’ “The Epic of America” – Fitzgerald too examines America’s supposed national identity as the country of unlimited possibilities. However, what Fitzgerald highlights is the tension between discourses on social advancement and excessive materialism.
This tension is symptomatic of the eponymous figure of Jay Gatsby, who comes from a modest background and makes a fortune through alcohol smuggling, fraud and other nefarious activities. His name – the “great” Gatsby – has associations with a showman, an illusionist. He is a master of manipulation and ultimately dies in the wake of an act of deceit. The greatness which Gatsby embodies does not correspond to the ideal of equal opportunity or social justice, let alone moral superiority, but combines social advancement with the nepotistic, selfish abuse of power by just a few people.
100 years after it was first published, “The Great Gatsby” has shown itself to be entirely prophetic, as many of the problems which Fitzgerald writes about still resonate today. Social inequality, environmental pollution, excessive materialism and the lure of effortless success are just as applicable to the modern age of Amazon and social media. Fitzgerald’s incisive reflection of opinions on feared culture wars and the effects of political equality for women still resonate today in conservative and far-right discourses in the USA and elsewhere.
Racist and sexist remarks set the tone in many a high society setting in Gatsby’s environment, and eugenics and segregation are posited as models for society. In addition, the novel highlights a kind of social hyperactivity, shown for example in the fact that people and actions are repeatedly described a being restless. When the lights go out at Gatsby’s party, the reader inevitably thinks of the global economic crisis of the Great Depression, which followed the equally manic phase of the so-called Roaring Twenties.
However, understanding Fitzgerald’s novel primarily as a portrait of that time would be to overlook his profound philosophical interest. In the middle of his astute diagnosis of complex social structures he describes moments of self-reflection, of the search for a cultural heritage and for a critical historical consciousness. At a formal level, too, “The Great Gatsby” breaks with established narrative patterns. Fitzgerald despised clichés and repeatedly expressed his aversion to hand-me-down phrases and ideas. His motivation to create something “entirely new” in his third novel – as he wrote in a letter to his publisher’s editor Maxwell Perkins – is shown in the book’s many stylistic experiments, for example the narrative perspective, the sociolect used by the high society of Long Island, and the formulation of a typical American zeitgeist. The novel ends with Nick Carraway’s contemplative gaze across the Atlantic and the attempt to integrate into the social discourses of the 1920s the colonial origins of America’s idealised self-image as a model for the free world. Fitzgerald ascribes a particularly important role to the aesthetic experience of art and culture.
“The Great Gatsby” was not always as popular as it is today. Interest in the novel when it was first published was moderate. It only became a bestseller after the end of the Second World War, when it was distributed in an “armed services edition” to US soldiers either stationed abroad or returning home. Its reputation as the epitome of the American Dream came into being at that time, i.e. at the same time as the expansion of America’s economic and political pre-eminence. It is not the social criticism intended by Fitzgerald, but the interpretation of the word “great” at the time of the Cold War, which today dominates the cultural legacy of this multilayered masterpiece. Last but not least, Fitzgerald’s novel itself provides the evidence for the relevance of literary works to social and political debates.
Dr. Silvia Schultermandl is Professor of American Studies in the English Department.
This article is from the university newspaper wissen|leben No. 3, 7 May 2025.