100 Years of Gatsby: Why F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Masterpiece Still Mesmerizes

By The Great Gatsby Club of New York

When The Great Gatsby was first published on April 10, 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s glittering novel was met with polite indifference. It wasn’t until after Fitzgerald's death, in 1940 that the book found its audience—ironically, among the soldiers of World War II, who received free copies as part of the Armed Services Editions program. It was then that Gatsby began its transformation from an underappreciated novel to an American literary touchstone.

Now, a century after its publication, The Great Gatsby continues to captivate new generations. The novel’s lush imagery and haunting themes—romantic longing, moral decay, the illusion of the American Dream—still feel unsettlingly relevant. Gatsby parties, complete with champagne towers, jazz ensembles, and flapper fashion, are commonplace, suggesting that the book’s allure is no longer confined to the page.

What explains this enduring fascination?

The novel’s setting, nestled in the Prohibition-era Jazz Age, offers readers a seductive vision of opulence and rebellion. Women with bobbed hair and cigarettes in elegant holders, men in tailored suits and polished shoes—the aesthetics of the Roaring Twenties remain aspirational. The characters, though deeply flawed, mirror aspects of ourselves. Jay Gatsby’s doomed quest for love, Daisy Buchanan’s careless self-absorption, and the narrator Nick Carraway’s passive complicity all speak to enduring human tendencies.

Beyond the glitz, The Great Gatsby lays bare the contradictions of American life: the glorification of wealth alongside the spiritual emptiness it often breeds. Fitzgerald’s world is populated by people chasing their reflections, driven by desire but incapable of fulfillment. The American Dream, that shimmering promise of self-made success, remains in the spotlight and mirage.

Today, in an era obsessed with luxury, celebrity, and reinvention, The Great Gatsby reads like prophetic words. The same forces that shaped Gatsby’s world—status anxiety, conspicuous consumption, and emotional detachment—continue to shape ours.

It’s little wonder, then, that the novel continues to spark passion. Some readers are introduced to it through Baz Luhrmann’s dizzying film adaptation, others come to it later in life and find themselves shaken by its melancholy truths. Either way, the story resonates.

And so, as the centennial of Fitzgerald’s masterpiece passes, Gatsby lovers old and new are returning to its pages, seeking clarity, comfort, or simply a glimpse into a world both lost and eerily familiar. For a book born of disappointment and rediscovered by chance, The Great Gatsby has become something of a national mirror—one we can’t stop gazing into.

It remains our great American novel not because it flatters us, but because it doesn’t.