Wednesday, December 31, 2025
The Great Gatsby at 100
First published in 1925, the Great Gatsby is one of the few books that most Americans seem to have read-- and everyone has an opinion about it. There are so many things to disagree about, too! I.e., who is the protagonist? Is Daisy manipulative or manipulated? Is there a problem with a book that does not seem to reflect a multiracial society (other than Tom's toxic racism) becoming a defining American novel?
My own short take on it-- which is different than what I would have said in college-- is that in large part it is a book about war. The key male figures in the book fought in World War One, and the novel takes place not long after their return. The war provided them meaning, and then they returned to find a lack of that. Nick is listless, sitting in the library at the Yale Club all day until he finds some kind of meaning in Gatsby's orbit. Jay Gatsby's obsession with Daisy (and his outlandish efforts to impress her) fills that hole. The women are entwined in this transition, and seem not to find meaning in the usual things expected of women in that day, particularly motherhood.
It's a book about the search for meaning, but there is not a whiff of faith in it-- that is not a place anyone turns. And sometimes what is not in a book, that negative space in the picture, is important, too.
