Like most “classics” it’s boring crap.
What would you propose schools teach instead?
There are some comic book versions you might like better.
Okay, now I have to say, I teach classic lit. When you see a bunch of formerly sneering 7th grade girls opining loudly about the creepiness versus virtue of Tom Sawyer, or dishing dirt on the characters in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or witness a classroom full of tenth graders hanging on every word Taylor utters to Burton in the film after they’ve done the work of going over the play, “The Taming of the Shrew” then they don’t have to admit it, literature is full of great characters and situations.
But F. Scott and this Gatsby in particular no. I fight it and Hemmingway and Steinbeck every year they try to throw it at me.
“The Old Man and the Sea” KAK! It’s vapid. It’s supposed to be so enlightened to recognize the beginning of the decline in culture. NO.
Middle and HS boys love the stories of Homer, Shakespeare (the war stories esp) and R. L. Stevenson if they’re introduced in the right way.
But NOT Gatsby and whoah I do not want to see DiCaprio’s attempt to pull us further down the vapid anti family pit.
It’s a very good “period” piece. You get a good image of the roaring 20s sort of urban America.
It is puffed up to be more, but for what it is, it’s perfectly good.