The Great Gatsby Themes

English 11 The Great Gatsby Standing as one of the great novels of the 20th century, The Great Gatsby has endured because of its amazing understanding and explanation of human nature in its purest form. The themes and ideals in this novel have remained eminent even now, some 80 years later, because The Great Gatsby is a book about the strongest of human emotions and needs; love, hate, distrust, and most of all, desire. The most prevalent …

…is ruined by the unworthiness of its object—money and pleasure. Like 1920s Americans in general, fruitlessly seeking a bygone era in which their dreams had value, Gatsby longs to re-create a vanished past—his time in Louisville with Daisy—but is incapable of doing so. When his dream crumbles, all that is left for Gatsby to do is die; all Nick can do is move back to Minnesota, where American values have not decayed.