In the outpouring of 1940, F. Scott Fitzgerald was disquieted astir “The Great Gatsby.” It had been 15 years since the caller was published, and the writer had small to amusement for it. “My God I americium a forgotten man,” Fitzgerald wrote to his wife, Zelda. “Gatsby had to beryllium taken retired of the Modern Library due to the fact that it didn’t sell, which was a blow.” Two months later, successful a missive to Maxwell Perkins, his longtime exertion astatine Scribner’s, Fitzgerald wondered whether a inexpensive paperback reprint mightiness “keep Gatsby successful the nationalist eye” and “make it a favourite with people rooms, profs, lovers of English prose—anybody.” Still, his hopes were dim. “Or is the publication unpopular?” helium asked Perkins. “Has it had its chance?” Seven months later, Fitzgerald was dead. “Gatsby,” it turned out, was not.
In the period since its début, successful April, 1925, “Gatsby” has been adapted for movie astatine slightest 5 times; mounted connected the stage, with and without philharmonic numbers; and adjacent turned into a video game, successful the benignant of Super Mario Bros. As aboriginal arsenic the nineteen-fifties, Scribner’s was selling much than 30 1000 copies each year, and by the extremity of the sixties that fig was person to fractional a million. By immoderate estimates, the full worldwide income of the caller are present upward of 30 cardinal copies. How did “Gatsby” turn truthful great, and wherefore has it endured truthful long?
The reply is high-school English. More than immoderate literate prize oregon personage publication club, the schoolhouse syllabus shapes American reading. This twelvemonth alone, astir seventeen cardinal students volition instrumentality their seats successful a high-school-English classroom, and a large galore of them volition beryllium sitting down to a transcript of “The Great Gatsby.” For decades, Fitzgerald’s caller has been among the astir often assigned texts successful American secondary schools, and speechmaking it—or, astatine least, pretending to person work it—has go a nationalist rite of passage. But “Gatsby” ’s spot successful the high-school canon was hardly inevitable, its way to the schoolroom winding astatine best.
After Fitzgerald’s death, a question of eulogies applauded the author, and astatine slightest a mates of them hailed his Jazz Age caller arsenic a classic. But, though Fitzgerald’s decease was bully for “Gatsby,” what truly made the quality was the Second World War. Beginning successful 1942, a run was launched to equip American servicemen with indispensable “weapons successful the warfare of ideas”—cheap paperback novels. The Council connected Books successful Wartime, a nonprofit made up of publishers, critics, booksellers, and librarians, worked to combat boredom and boost morale by distributing much than a 100 and 20 cardinal books to U.S. troops overseas. The Armed Services Editions were tailored to acceptable wrong a azygous pocket, with reinforced insubstantial meant to past for astatine slightest six readings. In 1945, American soldiers were sent a 100 and fifty-five 1000 copies of “The Great Gatsby,” making the caller a deed astatine last.
A fewer years later, successful a teen-ager’s relationship of his older brother’s wartime work and sensation successful reading, “Gatsby” was cited arsenic a peculiar favourite and “one he’s truthful brainsick about.” The fictional teen was Holden Caulfield, the narrator of J. D. Salinger’s “The Catcher successful the Rye.” Compared with what he’s speechmaking successful English people (“I’m not excessively brainsick astir Romeo and Juliet. . . . I mean I similar them, but—I don’t know. They get beauteous annoying sometimes”), Fitzgerald’s caller is acold much enjoyable (“Old Gatsby. Old sport. That killed me.”).
Salinger’s caller came retired successful 1951, the twelvemonth that scholars person cited arsenic the zenith of the alleged Fitzgerald revival. That was the twelvemonth that Arthur Mizener’s “The Far Side of Paradise,” the archetypal biography of Fitzgerald, was published, some marking and encouraging a renewed involvement successful the author. In an effort to capitalize connected “Gatsby” ’s newfound popularity, Scribner’s published a Student’s Edition of the caller successful 1957. It was truthful palmy that, 4 years later, the steadfast followed it up with an expanded School Edition, which included a foreword, a survey guide, and treatment questions written by Albert K. Ridout, a high-school English teacher successful Pelham, New York.
Around the aforesaid time, the caller was taught successful a people called Man’s Moral Progress astatine Westfield High School, successful New Jersey. Soon after, it was listed arsenic a favourite publication by junior-year students successful Salem, Massachusetts, and discussed successful the pages of English Journal, the authoritative work of the National Council of Teachers of English. In 1964, Clifton K. Hillegass—the Cliff of CliffsNotes—offered students a fifty-page summary of the novel’s crippled and large themes, each for the terms of a dollar. The Mizener biography whitethorn person marked the revival of Fitzgerald, but with the work of the CliffsNotes, arsenic the writer wrote of Gatsby and Daisy’s archetypal kiss, “the incarnation was complete.”
These archetypal Notes encouraged students to absorption little connected the book’s modernist benignant than connected its societal criticism. The usher describes Tom Buchanan, Gatsby’s rival successful emotion and the novel’s main villain, arsenic a achromatic supremacist, “disturbed by the thought of a imaginable displacement successful the established economical and societal order.” “But things are changing,” the survey usher asserts, “although not possibly arsenic rapidly and radically arsenic alarmist Tom whitethorn think.” This, it seems, was a substance of interpretation. When a caller variation of the CliffsNotes was published, 2 years later, successful 1966 (another motion of the novel’s ascendance successful American secondary schools), Tom’s fearfulness that “the achromatic contention volition be . . . utterly submerged” was reinterpreted arsenic an “understandable interest for preserving the societal presumption quo.”
“Gatsby” ’s mid-century emergence to required speechmaking was not conscionable an contented of humanities oregon governmental relevance. It was besides a substance of method. Education scholars often narrate the improvement of high-school-English pedagogy arsenic a clash betwixt 2 competing schools of thought. On 1 broadside is the “student-centered” attack typified by the acquisition prof Louise M. Rosenblatt and her 1938 book, “Literature arsenic Exploration,” which emphasized the resonances betwixt the enactment and each reader’s idiosyncratic experience. On the different is simply a “text-centered” attack known arsenic New Criticism, associated with the literate critics Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, and their textbook “Understanding Fiction.”
Brooks and Warren’s mode of speechmaking fundamentally transformed the survey of lit astatine precocious schools and universities alike. Rather than promote students to marque meaningful connections betwixt the lives of fictional characters and their own, the New Critics taught them to hunt for structure, symbolism, and theme. This changed not lone however students were asked to work but what books they were assigned. A symbol-laden caller similar “Gatsby” offered an perfect accidental for teen-age readers to signifier the New Critics’ signature techniques. (That the publication besides came successful astatine little than 2 100 pages didn’t hurt.) As overmuch arsenic Fitzgerald’s communicative of booze and reckless driving captured the nineteen-twenties, it was besides the cleanable conveyance for the captious and pedagogical fashions of the mid-century.
The 1966 CliffsNotes testifies to New Criticism’s increasing prominence successful the high-school classroom. The “valley of ashes,” the “eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg,” and, yes, “the greenish airy astatine the extremity of Daisy’s dock” go recently important, affluent symbols “invested with meanings that spell beyond the concerns of crippled and characterization, lasting for the main ideas of the caller and . . . a wide disapproval of American culture.” Perhaps this is however you, too, were taught to work the book, culminating successful a five-paragraph effort connected the value of the greenish airy oregon Gatsby’s many-colored shirts.
The New Critics’ attack to knowing fabrication has dominated the secondary-school English program for decades. Still, what acquisition scholars person called “the hegemony of New Criticism” is not absolute. As 1 pedagogue lamented, successful a 1968 contented of English Journal, “We are teachers of English, not puzzle solvers.” Many teachers proceed to favour Rosenblatt’s approach, and question to amusement however a caller astir being borne backmost ceaselessly into the past has thing to accidental astir the present.
According to a nationalist survey of teachers, by the extremity of the nineteen-eighties, “Gatsby” was required speechmaking successful much than fractional of the nation’s nationalist schools, edging retired “Animal Farm” and coming successful conscionable down “Hamlet.” “What does the caller accidental astir materialism?” asks a South Carolina teacher successful a 1989 acquisition program connected “Gatsby.” “What, if any, are the similarities betwixt the 1920s and the 1980s?” According to Andrew Newman, an English prof who has studied the teaching of “Gatsby” during this period, determination are rather a few. Between Reaganomics and Robin Leach’s “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” “for students successful the 1980s,” Newman writes, “an unbridgeable region betwixt humble roots and utmost wealthiness was connected constant, garish display.”
For Jody Weverka, who began teaching the caller successful the mid-eighties, astatine San Ramon Valley High School, 1 of the champion ways to get her eleventh graders funny successful “Gatsby” was to amusement them a videotape of a much modern magnate. Before discussing the callousness astatine the bosom of Tom and Daisy’s marriage, the people watched an ABC News interrogation with Donald Trump and Marla Maples, his woman astatine the time. “They were careless people,” Fitzgerald writes. “They smashed up things and creatures and past retreated backmost into their wealth oregon their immense carelessness oregon immoderate it was that kept them together, and fto different radical cleanable up the messiness they had made.”
This would marque for a large transition to dissect successful the Advanced Placement program’s English Literature exam, which archetypal cited “Gatsby” successful its effort prompts successful 1982 and has not stopped since. That year, a 100 and forty 1000 students took portion successful 1 of the program’s galore exams. In 2024, its English exams unsocial were administered to astir a cardinal students, a 3rd of A.P.’s full enrollment. For the past 15 years, the astir fashionable A.P. English programme has been English Language and Composition, which advises teachers to absorption connected “short nonfiction pieces” and gully connected novels similar “Gatsby” “only if they were composed to execute a rhetorical purpose.”
At the aforesaid time, successful an effort to beforehand “college and vocation readiness,” the Common Core State Standards Initiative, launched successful 2010 and presently implemented successful forty-one states, recommends that students chiefly work “informational texts” (nonfiction, journalism, speeches) alternatively than literate ones. Though caller efforts connected the portion of authorities legislatures and activistic groups similar Moms for Liberty to prohibition books successful schools person received acold greater attention, the A.P. program and the Common Core person done overmuch much to signifier what students are—and are not—reading.
For much than 7 decades, high-school teachers person utilized “The Great Gatsby” to analyse the American Dream and its existent authorities of health, to present students to literate techniques and the powerfulness of adjacent attention, and to accent the value of uncovering a designated driver. In Nevada, students person written letters to Daisy and staged a coroner’s inquest for Myrtle. In Florida, 1 people published the Green Light Gazette, a fictional paper that drew connected existent humanities sources. In California and Nebraska, students threw lavish parties successful flapper garb, with soda for champagne. In Texas, they enactment Tom connected trial. When I taught eleventh-grade English, successful suburban Massachusetts, my people held a ceremonial for Gatsby. Each pupil work a little eulogy and past placed an entity representing the antheral successful a shoebox that we ne'er figured retired however to bury.
“My full mentation of penning I tin sum up successful 1 sentence,” Fitzgerald wrote, successful 1920. “An writer ought to constitute for the younker of his ain generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters for ever afterward.” In this, helium was wildly successful. High-school English didn’t marque “Gatsby” great, but it has surely kept it so. The question is whether the caller tin past for different 100 years. ♦
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