Is a social critique successful if the audience leaves the work invigorated for the lifestyle it purports to critique? 

I think of fans of The Wolf of Wall Street. Scorsese in 2013, defending the film’s debauchery and depiction of white collar crime: “This is something that’s not going to go away if you don’t talk about it.” 

But there are different ways of “talking about” something. The frat bros who thrill to that three-hour flick are not watching with their hands soberly at their chin, saying, “Yes, that Jordan sure does make a mess of things, the poor guy. I shall not behave like him.”

What made the HBO crime drama The Sopranos so popular? David Chase, the show’s creator, was always adamant that he meant for the audience to be revolted by the behavior of mob boss Tony Soprano. Assuming he’s being sincere, I think he overestimates the perceptiveness of his audience. Or, more charitably, he underestimates the seductiveness of his product. The show didn’t win a pork-store worth of awards because viewers were piqued by some trenchant exploration of capitalism and the erosion of family values. The show was a hit because it was fun — and it is fun, I think we can all agree, because beyond being well acted and well scripted, it offers a voyeuristic look into the lives of monstrous people doing monstrous things.    

I don’t think all art requires a moral binary, nor do I think all art should have a life-affirming message. but I do think that if a movie or a TV show or a novel claims to critique a certain type of living, and instead leaves its audience jazzed by the lifestyle it depicts, it has failed. 

And if a work fails should it be canonized and forced in front of students every year?  

The answer is no. Get The Great Gatsby out of the canon of high school texts. It’s crimes against young minds are numerous.  

Let me step back from morals for a moment. When is the last time you tried reading those opening pages of The Great Gatsby? 

The prose is tedious. It confirms every preconceived notion students have about old literature: it’s incomprehensible, and when comprehended, it’s a let down.

Compare it to the opening of Huckleberry Finn. 

Compare it to the opening of O Pioneers! 

These classic novels begin with characters who share emotions with which we can still identify decades later, and it is shared in a way that is direct and even establishes drama. None of that is there in Gatsby.

Read these opening pages to a teenager and see how interested they are. It’s not the windy syntax or the elevated diction. It’s the dusty WASP-yness of the message. What student in a classroom a hundred years later is going to be hooked by this stilted father-son dynamic? 

Gatsby is always heralded as an example of a first person narrator observer, and I’ve heard the argument plenty of times that, in fact, it’s intentionally dry, indirectly characterizing Nick as a wet blanket. To that, I must again appeal to the minds of our nation’s youth, who are at an impressionable age when they are forced to read this book. Is it responsible to make these young minds listen to a wet blanket pontificate about the American Dream? 

It doesn’t matter that it’s iambic pentameter, and it doesn’t matter that it’s the most famous closing line in all of literature. It’s lame and self-indulgent. Why are we devoting precious time with formative minds asking them to read a humorless Ivy League soap opera? If teachers claim this is the peak of American literature, can we blame students for then being skeptical of literature in general (if they weren’t already), skeptical of reading and the utility of reading? Can we blame them for being skeptical of our judgement as educators? 

Or, even worse, the student actually thinks this prose is good, and uses it as a model for their own writing as they enter those critical years of college applications. 

It’s as irresponsible as coaching a gifted high school baseball pitcher with techniques from a hundred years prior… 

The pitcher’s talent will be squandered and they will look like a fool in the process, just like the student in 2020 who spends her formative years imitating Fitzgerald’s florid writing. 

Again, the worse scenario is if students actually like the book! Because the entire social critique of The Great Gatsby is heavy-handed and insincere. It’s a celebration of the Jazz Age. Any attempt to claim otherwise relies on a plot that is heavy on melodrama and light on substantive exploration of the degradation of values. Watch the trailer for the 2013 adaptation and tell me if this looks like anything but a romp through the Jazz Age. What are students really saying they like if they like this? The drunk driving? The abusive relationships? The nihilist lifestyle of the Roaring Twenties?  

Surely it isn’t the symbolism, which is heavy-handed, again acting as a discouragement to students to take literature seriously. The green light? The eyes? The Valley of Ashes? Fitzgerald writes metaphor as deftly as Daisy drives a car. Metaphoric language — which should only be used to simplify difficult ideas or unearth hidden concepts — doesn’t serve much of a purpose if the characters are caricatures and the plot is heavy melodrama.     

What Gatsby is not light on is casual racism. While the segregationist drivel spouted by Tom is meant to establish him as the antagonist, it can’t be ignored that the only non-Anglo character is a Jewish caricature. Wolfsheim is not complex enough to serve as an examination of America’s complex relationship with Jewish culture in the 20s. Like all the characters, he’s one note.

Unlike Twain or Melville or O’Connor, Fitzgerald is presented a chance to explore the continuing problem of race relations in America, and sidesteps it. Instead he reinforces hateful views. 

You can argue that the book is more racially complex that it appears on the surface. But these interpretations do not make up the majority of readings in the high school classroom. 

So again, why are we so devoted to pushing this book on our youth? 

Because it’s short. That’s why it took off in the first place. It was short enough for American soldiers to read in their barracks during World War II. After they were done fighting the war, some of them came home and became English teachers, and they decided this was worth adding to the curriculum. It’s tough to blame them: it’s under two hundred pages, the symbolism is simple enough for a teacher of any experience, it’s set in a vibrant time in American, where the country reached its zenith in music, literature, and baseball. It was an easy choice to make in a post-war American classroom, and it’s easy to see how it was preferable to some of the other important novels of the same era (Sinclair Lewis’s satirical Main Street; Hemingway’s opaque The Sun Also Rises; the aforementioned O Pioneers, Huckleberry Finn, Moby Dick), which have since faded from high school syllabi, and are now mostly read in college or college-level AP classes, if at all. 

Just because Gatsby was an easy choice doesn’t mean it was correct. Just because it has maintained pedagogical inertia (from, let’s face it, mostly white teachers) doesn’t mean Fitzgerald’s little book deserves a vaunted place in the canon.  

You can argue that it should continue to be taught so that students won’t be blind to all the cultural references. In that case, I’d be happy to offer it as a book club option for my students who prioritize these things. 

Passionate fans of Gatsby’s might also argue that one single book can’t be all that bad, and who am I to criticize it? Well, I just really like it, and I want to share my love of that with my students. 

Fine, I guess. There are a lot of famous novels I really like, too, that I don’t choose to force my students to read. Shouldn’t every book that we force our students to read advance two goals: get students to appreciate good literature and expand their minds; challenge their skills in reading? There are works that students need to read to become better people and need a strong teacher to lead them through it. Shakespeare. Homer. Any modern poetry. Shouldn’t we be a little more careful in what we force our students to consume? 

I’ve read it three or four times at different points in my life, including high school. I’ve never hated it as a book. And I’m not advocating for Gatsby to be banned from the classroom (I wouldn’t be against it, though). However, I am adamant that it should not be held up as a great work of fiction deserving any more reverence and attention than a young adult novel. 

To give it anything more sends the wrong message to students, the message being that this is an amazing and important book. Which it’s not, ol’ sport.  

Instead of teaching a class unit on Gatsby, consider these alternatives…

Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathaniel West (A hilarious short little caustic tale by a contemporary of Fitzgerald) 

Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry (A more realist and diverse look at the American Dream)

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (Like, Gatsby, but with complex characters!) 

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh (A British misanthrope’s examination of the Roaring Twenties) 

Babe: The Legend Comes to Life

O Pioneers 

Main Street