Disclaimer: This article assumes that as the reader, you’re familiar with the plot and ending of The Great Gatsby.
Five years shy of being centenarian, The Great Gatsby reveals what American culture was like in the 1920s. Surprisingly, not that much different from today. As we enter the new decade of 2020, the novel’s meaning and relevance still stand. Perhaps we can take some of these lessons that F. Scott Fitzgerald discloses into our modern-day “Roaring ’20s.”
Have fun …
It’s no secret that Fitzgerald defined and immortalized the right way to party through his detailed descriptions of Gatsby’s extravagant events, where “in his blue gardens, men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” Entering a new decade calls for all types of celebration, especially one that is hopeful for reform. The 1920s saw a lot of change. It was probably the decade that proliferated modern culture as we know it, especially in the arena of women’s rights and evolving gender norms. Similarly, the youth of today are also banking on the many changes that could happen over the next decade. Luckily, we would be able to make decisions without a prohibition in place.
… but don’t push it.
The Great Gatsby isn’t the only novel by Fitzgerald that addresses the downfalls of opulence. Living quite an excessive yet troubled life himself, Fitzgerald warns readers that it isn’t all that it seems. While he quickly emulates this theme through Tom and Daisy’s characters described by Nick as “careless people” in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald also delves deeper into the hardships of the upper echelon in his earlier novel, The Beautiful and the Damned. This theme is still highly relevant today, possibly more than it was back then for most people. These days, the general culture strives on social media to show off the best moments of their life. Some even go so far as making name-brand purchases solely for the clout they’d get online, despite barely able to afford them. Social media can be a slippery slope of disillusionment banking on positive perception no matter what the cost. Fitzgerald would probably tell those people that the excess isn’t cute.
What means the most to us?
Carefully observing Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship in hindsight brings up this question. While Gatsby had everything material he could ever want, he still wasn’t satisfied. Naively, he wanted Daisy’s love in return, even if that meant doing the absolute most (the parties, the crime, adultery, etc.) and ultimately dying for it.
As we enter this new decade, we have to ask ourselves how the past has brought us to our life’s current state. Making new year’s resolutions can help us reflect on our lives as well. It’s also imperative that for real change to happen we should re-evaluate our previous goals and ask ourselves if it still means as much to us as it did back then, and whether it’s even worth it to continue pursuing. Apparently, to Gatsby, Daisy was worth everything. Fitzgerald’s infamous last line of the novel leaves readers with a disclosure of the universal human struggle of desiring change but getting caught up in repeating previous cycles: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
There’s always hope.
If there’s one positive thing you can take away from The Great Gatsby, it’s that there’s almost always something to hope for. Regardless of all the melancholic drama of the novel, we have to admit that Gatsby was pretty darn good at being optimistic—which is what we should all be for 2020! The Great Gatsby’s timeless essence is what makes it one of my favorite novels of all time. While being timeless, it also has the power to bring us back to a time so well-defined by its unique social culture (can we talk about how amazing 1920s jazz and fashion were?!). Hopefully, we can one day look back at our 2020s and feel the same way, old sport.