Re-Reading Gatsby at 100
One hundred years after its publication, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby still shimmers in the American imagination. Literary critics praise its lyricism and symbolism, often overlooking what remains unsaid.
English teachers and curriculum designers still teach it as a parable of longing and illusion, rarely questioning what it erases.
But in this Symphony ’77 Inquiry Circle session, we set aside the poetry and looked at the structure. We asked: What is this dream Gatsby’s chasing? And what happens when we realize the dream isn’t broken—it’s rigged?
We weren’t reading the book for nostalgia. We were investigating its architecture. And we found something hauntingly familiar: a system that dangles hope while denying access, that rewards performance but withholds power.
For all his wealth and effort, Gatsby could never cross the invisible line that whiteness, class, and lineage constructed.
And that’s the part that rippled across our reflections: Gatsby is white—and even he couldn’t get in.
Gatsby was dazzling, wealthy, driven—but still “new money,” still uninvited. He could be admired, even envied—but never truly accepted.
If Gatsby—white, wealthy, and willing to perform—was still locked out, what does that say about a system that never intended to include the rest of us in the first place?
And perhaps even more urgently: what does it mean for the white Americans still holding on to the myth, especially as the white middle class continues to disappear, and the dream offers diminishing returns to even its most loyal believers?
When whiteness no longer guarantees stability, and proximity to power no longer ensures protection, what happens when the dream betrays its believers?
That question hung in the room like a quiet ache. Gatsby’s story was never just a romantic tragedy. It was a warning about chasing validation from a system designed to use, discard, and forget.
The Cost of Assimilation
We next turned to the question of assimilation—what we do, perform, or suppress to gain access.
Gatsby reinvented himself. He changed his name, bought a mansion, threw parties, and dressed the part.
But it wasn’t enough. We saw how the American Dream defines who should assimilate, who benefits from it, and who remains permanently marginal, no matter how well they play the role.
The cost of trying to belong is steep. And the rules of acceptance shift constantly. You’re never quite enough. You’re always just outside the gate.
Enter AfricanAmericanism
AfricanAmericanism (AAism) entered the room not as a theory, but as a spiritual-structural practice. A living, breathing refusal to accept proximity as power. It does not chase inclusion. It does not bend toward approval. It builds what it needs—rooted in memory, rhythm, and self-definition.
AAism claims sovereignty. It builds power rather than waiting for permission. It confronts the lie that greatness comes through imitation and dismantles the illusion that assimilation leads to liberation. While Gatsby reshaped himself to fit a world that would never fully accept him, AAism reshapes the world entirely, on its terms.
AAism names assimilation for what it is—a trap. It dismantles the illusion that power is inherited and builds its foundation instead. AAism refuses sameness and defines greatness on its terms: through rhythm, self-authorship, and the fearless expression of cultural truth. We felt the weight of that truth land between us.
AAism is applied Black history 24/7/365. Forged in the experience of African Americans, it turns memory into method, survival into strategy, and erasure into design. It is not merely resistance—it is reconstruction.
What the Novel Erased
Then we listened again to Gatsby’s world—and heard what wasn’t there. The sound of jazz pulsing through his parties? That was the soundtrack of the Harlem Renaissance—Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong—Black brilliance. But Fitzgerald never names them. He borrows the rhythm without crediting the source.
Fitzgerald didn’t overlook Black culture—he erased it. The novel doesn’t simply depict exclusion; it enacts it. Page by page, it performs the silencing of the very people whose brilliance shaped the era it glorifies.
The Jazz Age was not a backdrop—it was Black culture, brilliance, and survival.
In this way, The Great Gatsby builds its fantasy by whitewashing the very art that gives it life. AAism calls us to reclaim that erasure—not by asking for recognition, but by telling the truth. Loudly. Publicly. Rhythmically.
Stillness as Strategy
From there, we turned inward. Using the Meditation Investigation Process, we invited stillness, not as escape, but as confrontation. We asked where we carried the dream’s betrayals in our bodies. Where do we tighten to fit in?
Where do we mistake effort for worthiness? And why do we keep chasing green lights we know were never ours to reach?
Stillness became inquiry. Inquiry became clarity. And clarity opened the door to something else entirely: release.
Designing a Different Future
With that clarity, we returned to the fourfold Path of the African Americanvist: testify, unshackle, walk in Power, and become free.
These aren’t metaphors. They are modes of movement—personal, political, and ancestral. They are blueprints for building lives and systems that don’t depend on someone else’s permission.
They reminded us: we are not here to prove our value to broken systems. We are here to live beyond them.
Questions to Carry Forward
If you missed the session, you’re not behind—you’re just arriving into the reflection now. Here are the questions we carried home with us:
- What dream did I inherit that no longer serves me?
- What green light am I chasing, and why?
- What am I ready to reclaim—not for approval, but for freedom?
- What happens when the Dream fails even those it claimed to serve?
We’re Done Asking to Be Let In
By the time we closed the circle, one thing was clear:
We are not the dreamers.
We are the designers.
Designers of new economies.
Designers of joy not contingent on acceptance.
Designers of truths that don’t require translation.
Designers of freedom—on our terms.
If The Great Gatsby was a fantasy, this session was the reckoning.
And we are no longer chasing the dream.
We are building what’s real.
Looking Forward: Making America Gatsby Again
(A Coda)
The Great Gatsby is more than a story of wealth and longing. It’s a blueprint for the very nostalgia that MAGAism feeds on. Gatsby’s dream isn’t just personal—it’s national. It’s a fantasy of restoration: bring back the girl, the glory, the gate that separates the insiders from the strivers. It’s about reclaiming a greatness that never existed for most of us.
MAGAism mirrors that longing. It dresses up exclusion as patriotism. It sells return as redemption. But like Gatsby’s green light, the dream stays out of reach—because those in power never designed the system to deliver it. Not to Gatsby. Not to immigrants. Not to Black folks. Not to working-class whites who now feel the sting of their disposability. Not to those who form MAGA.
And yet, the fantasy persists.
Make America Great Again is just The Great Gatsby in a red hat.
MAGAism calls for the return of a world where whiteness rules quietly; wealth stays in the family, and power forces everyone to stay in their place.
As we uncovered, the Dream never operated as neutral ground. The architects of that Dream built it through exclusion. They promised greatness but blocked the gate. They claimed legitimacy by silencing the very creators whose culture they exploited.
Gatsby reached for a light built to blind him. So did America. And MAGAism demands that we reach again, knowing full well what it intends to deny.
We say no.
We don’t chase retro dreams.
We build present truth.
We don’t revive illusions.
We design liberation.
So, the answer isn’t nostalgia when we ask what comes after Gatsby. It’s clarity, agency, rhythm, sovereignty, and a future where we no longer ask permission to create.