PSA: A lot of people think 'The Great Gatsby' is a love story

I keep seeing this in book club chats, but the book is really about the failure of the American Dream and class. Fitzgerald himself said it was about the 'whole being greater than the sum of its parts'. The obsession with Gatsby and Daisy's romance misses the point about the empty wealth of the 1920s. Has your club ever had a big split over what a book's main theme actually is?

3 comments

3 Comments

markm279d ago

Disagree, it's both. The love story is the vehicle for showing that emptiness.

alice_harris359d ago

The emptiness is the whole point, that's why the love story feels so hollow. It's not a bug, it's a feature. You're just describing the same thing twice.

abby_palmer8d ago

Remember when you realized the hollow feeling was the whole point? That's what clicked for me.