"The American Dream is, of course, another of Gatsby's Big Themes, and one that continues to be misunderstood. 'Fitzgerald shows that that dream is very powerful, but that it is indeed a very hard one for most Americans to realise. It feeds them great hopes, great desires, and it's extraordinary, the efforts that so many of them make to fulfil those dreams and those desires, but that dream is beyond the reach of many, and many, they give up all too much to try to achieve that great success,' Cain points out. Among the obstacles, Fitzgerald seems to suggest, are hard-and-fast class lines that no amount of money will enable Gatsby to cross. It's a view that resonates with a mood that Cain says he's been picking up on among his students--a certain 'melancholy' for the American Dream, the feeling fanned by racial and economic inequalities that the pandemic has only deepened."
Hephzibah Anderson at the BBC calls The Great Gatsby, the "world's most misunderstood novel."
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