Mention The Great Gatsby, and people think Leonardo DiCaprio in a tuxedo, glass raised, framed by a blur of fireworks and exquisite Art Deco excess. Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 film adaptation brought F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel back into the mainstream, complete with a Jay-Z soundtrack and visuals designed for the digital age. The movie inspired a wave of Gatsby-themed parties, with people in rented tuxedos and synthetic flapper dresses sipping champagne from coupes for Instagram.
For a generation seduced by visual spectacle, this was their first encounter with Gatsby — not as the tragic dreamer Fitzgerald wrote, but as a dazzling host. Yet the irony is hard to miss: Fitzgerald’s novel quietly dismantles that fantasy.
The story is narrated by Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner and thinly veiled version of Fitzgerald himself, who was born in St Paul, Minnesota. Carraway is drawn into the fast-paced, extravagant lifestyle of Long Island’s wealthy elite, and particularly into the world of multimillionaire and bon vivant Jay Gatsby, a fellow Midwesterner who came east chasing success and a new identity. It is Carraway’s cousin, Daisy Buchanan, who becomes the focus of Gatsby’s obsession and the catalyst for his downfall. For Carraway, witnessing the events that unfold adds to his growing sense of disillusionment. Throughout the novel, the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock comes to represent everything Gatsby cannot have. He stares at it from across the bay, convinced that one day he will have the life he has always imagined. But the light is always just out of reach.
Long before it became a cinematic fever dream, The Great Gatsby was a modest 180-page novel that struggled to find readers. It sold fewer than 25,000 copies in Fitzgerald’s lifetime and was out of print by the time he died in 1940 at the age of 44. Early reviews were mixed: some praised Fitzgerald’s elegant, economical prose and subtle irony; others dismissed it as lacking substance.
After World War 2, the book was rediscovered and slowly earned its place as a contender for the title of the Great American Novel. Its modernist view of the American dream, coupled with Fitzgerald’s lyrical, pared-down prose, resonated in a country grappling with economic change and social upheaval. Readers and scholars found enduring relevance in its themes of class, identity and disillusionment. It became a staple in American education, translated into dozens of languages and referenced across film, fashion, music and politics.
New York City is marking its 100th anniversary in true Jazz Age style, with events celebrating the novel’s cultural impact. On April 25, a new Broadway musical adaptation opens at the Broadway Theatre, starring Ryan McCartan as Jay Gatsby and Sarah Hyland as Daisy Buchanan. The production brings Fitzgerald’s characters to the stage with original music and choreography, aimed at a new generation.
On April 11, the Empire State Building lit up green to mark the centenary, a nod to the novel’s most recognisable symbol. The lighting ceremony formed part of a citywide tribute that included remarks from Blake Hazard, Fitzgerald’s great-granddaughter, who spoke about the book’s continued relevance to conversations about class, ambition and identity.
The city also hosted themed events, from Gatsby-inspired cocktails at top bars to book displays, public readings and special menus at restaurants. A sweepstake offered fans a chance to stay at Oheka Castle, the real-life inspiration for Gatsby’s mansion.
Why does The Great Gatsby still resonate a century on? At its core, the novel is about longing. A poor boy sheds his roots and transforms himself into a wealthy, mysterious figure, convinced he can recreate a lost love and a past that never existed. In today’s world of personal branding, curated online lives and performative displays of luxury set against growing inequality, Gatsby’s story is strikingly relevant.
Today, the richest 1% owns nearly half of global wealth. In the US, inequality has returned to levels last seen in the 1920s. The American dream, the seductive idea that anyone can succeed through hard work, once drew generations of immigrants to the US. For many, that dream has faded.
What lingers most from Fitzgerald’s novel is its ruthless clarity and what it asks of the reader. Through Nick’s eyes, we see a world where Daisy and her husband Tom, “careless people”, he calls them, destroy lives without consequence. “They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
The oft-quoted final lines are among the most evocative and profoundly poignant in American literature, capturing not only Gatsby’s yearning, but a universal truth about the human condition: “I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning —
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
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