Fitzgerald's Prophecy

The Great Gatsby's diagnosis of American culture grows more accurate with each passing decade. The green light is literature's definitive symbol of desire that can never be fulfilled. Gatsby's relentless self-invention anticipated today's culture of personal branding — curating an identity for public consumption. The Valley of Ashes showed that glamour depends on hidden suffering somewhere else.

Fitzgerald captured America's founding myth — that reinvention is always possible — and revealed it as both the nation's greatest strength and its cruelest lie.