It’s been 30+ years since I read it, but what I remember is it being about purpose-less people who drifted aimlessly, causing trouble in their wake, always self-centered. Couldn’t stand them.
Thanks for your response. I teach high school English. It hadn’t been taught to me as I teach it, so it’s no wonder most folks don’t understand Fitzgerald’s point. He was a moralist, even though he certainly didn’t live as one. But his Catholic sensibilities (instilled in his youth) are clearly evident in Gatsby. He uses St. Augustine’s City of God/City of Man as his backdrop. Gatsby is the high priest in the City of Man: fallen man who romps about an earthly carnival, headed for doom. You are right that there are no upstanding characters, with the exception of Nick the narrator, who gets wounded in this journey back east. Fitzgerald has assembled a host of symbols that he joins in an intricate puzzle, such as colors, shrubbery, book titles, the wild west, the American Dream and so much more to tell his cautionary tale, and in the end joins it to the first settlers of the New World who seek the new but are trapped in man’s state of fallen nature ever since the loss of the Garden of Eden. The book’s value cannot be understood until it is seen through this lense.