When The Great Gatsby was first published in 1925, the Jazz Age in the United States was at its peak. The period was defined by opulence, unrestrained ambition, and a desire to transcend class barriers. F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel chronicled the rise and fall of Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire grasping at The American Dream — the pursuit of wealth and status. Born to poor farmers in North Dakota, Gatsby accumulates his wealth through bootlegging (the illegal sale of alcohol) during the Prohibition era in the United States. He invents a new identity fuelled by the goal of winning back his lost love, Daisy Buchanan. But Daisy is never just a woman — she is a symbol of everything Gatsby believes success will grant him: legitimacy, belonging, and purpose. She is, in the end, a mirage. Gatsby believes, to his dying breath, that he can recreate the past and forge his destiny. “He had come a long way to this blue lawn,” Fitzgerald writes, “and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.” But the dream was always out of reach. Daisy ultimately chooses the safety of her wealthy husband over Gatsby’s romantic promises. She disappears “into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby — nothing.” When Gatsby is killed, mistaken for the driver in a fatal hit-and-run (a crime Daisy committed), no one comes to his funeral. Not even Daisy. “In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald intricately dissects the illusion of aspirational mobility within a rigidly stratified society,” says Dr Yajnaseni Mukherjee, Academic Accreditation and Compliance Officer, Woolf, San Francisco, California. “Gatsby’s transformation from impoverished James Gatz to wealthy socialite epitomises the dream of reinvention. However, his inability to penetrate the world of old money underscores the impermeability of class boundaries.” Beyond the glamour: The ‘Lost Generation’ To truly understand Gatsby, we must first understand his world. America’s ‘Roaring Twenties’, believed to be a reaction to the horrors of World War 1 (1914-1920), saw people dance harder, drink deeper, and chase after consumerist dreams, all in the hope of outrunning existential despair. American novelist Gertrude Stein famously called this the “Lost Generation.” Flappers — bold young women who cut their hair into rebellious bobs, rouged their cheeks, painted their lips in daring reds, and danced with abandon in jazz clubs until dawn — became the decade’s unofficial mascots. Their dresses — short, fringed, and sequined — fluttered with every Charleston and shimmy (popular dance moves of the day). Strings of pearls dangled from their necks and cigarettes from long, elegant holders. They spoke in slang, drank gin cocktails from Art Deco glasses, and drove fast roadsters like men. The men, too, embraced the spectacle. They slicked back their hair with pomade, wore tuxedos or white suits with two-tone shoes, and leaned against polished mahogany bars sipping illegal liquor procured through whispered deals in smoky backrooms. Jazz — the soundtrack of the age — spilled from every speakeasy. This was the age Fitzgerald captured: glamorous on the outside, hollow at its core. “Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a perpetual reminder of what befalls nations and communities that prioritise human ambition and personal ascendency over spiritual growth, contentment, and social cohesion,” says Dr Nivedita Gupta, Assistant Professor and Programme Leader at the Amity Institute of English Studies and Research, Amity University, Noida. “Figures like Gatsby and Tom Buchanan are not born in isolation but are the catastrophic consequences of social ethics that valorise greed, inordinate desire, and outrageous ambition.” A century later, Gatsby's iconic green light (seen at the end of Daisy's dock) — a symbol of ambition and illusion — still flickers in the dreams of millions, who believe they can make their future and that anything is possible if one works hard enough. But, like Gatsby’s dreams, the illusion of success often obscures deep structural divides. The ‘Great Gatsby Curve’ In a 2012 speech, economist Alan Krueger popularised the ‘Great Gatsby Curve,’ which illustrates the relationship between income inequality and intergenerational mobility. The greater the gap between rich and poor, the harder it becomes for those at the bottom to climb the ladder. The dream of reinvention — of starting anew and pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps — is central to both Gatsby’s America and contemporary India. But as Mukherjee, who wrote her doctoral thesis on Fitzgerald’s fiction, says, “In contemporary India, despite democratic ideals, caste hierarchies and economic disparity similarly thwart equitable mobility, mirroring Gatsby’s futile pursuit.” From Gatsby’s America to today’s India India’s economic liberalisation in 1991 ushered in an era of upward mobility. Yet, the wealth distribution tells a different story. The Paris-based World Inequality Lab, in its 2024 paper, Income and Wealth Inequality in India, 1922-2023: The Rise of the Billionaire Raj, said that by 2022-23, the top 1% of income and wealth shares (22.6% and 40.1%) in India were at their highest historical levels. “In a country like India, there exists greater income disparities… It is very difficult for individuals to come out of their parents’ economic status. Mostly, the inter-generational inequalities continue for at least two generations. The number of billionaires has increased manifold in India, further strengthening the income divide between different strata of society,” says Professor NS Bist, Adjunct Professor, Department of Population Studies, Himachal Pradesh University. This extreme concentration of wealth is not simply a statistical anomaly — it has real-world consequences. Knight Frank’s The Wealth Report 2025 shows a 6% rise in India’s high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) — those with assets over $10 million — bringing the total to 85,698 in 2024, up from 80,686 the previous year. The number is projected to climb further to 93,753 by 2028. The report also notes an increase in India’s billionaire population, which reached 191 in 2024, with 26 new billionaires added in just one year. In contrast, only seven joined the ranks in 2019. A 2023 working paper from People Research on India’s Consumer Economy (PRICE) found that India’s Gini coefficient rose to 0.410 in 2023 from 0.371 in 1955, indicating widening inequality. In rural areas, inequality increased significantly (from 0.341 to 0.405), while urban inequality saw a modest decline. “One formula for success does not fit all; one definition of happiness cannot encompass the vast possibilities of human experience,” adds Dr Gupta. “When both success and happiness become narrowly defined and assessed through the lens of another (the degenerated voyeur), the resulting fractures are felt across the entire social fabric.” The class-caste chasm Like Gatsby’s green light across the bay, India has its own emblems of aspiration: the IITs and IIMs, the start-up culture, and a diaspora that dominates global boardrooms. But for many, these remain distant lights on the horizon. A 2022 study from IIM Kozhikode, Economic Mobility and Inequality in India: A Structural Analysis, by Chinmayi Srikanth and Shubhasis Dey, paints a stark picture: caste and geography significantly influence mobility. Upper-caste, urban-born individuals have far greater chances of upward movement compared to their lower-caste and rural counterparts. The transmission of economic advantage is stronger in India compared to many other developing economies, aligning neatly with the grim arc of the Gatsby Curve. Access to quality education, social capital, and financial security determines economic outcomes more decisively than individual talent or effort, the report says. National Family Health Survey data underscores these disparities. Just 12.3% of Scheduled Castes and 5.4% of Scheduled Tribes fall into the highest wealth quintile. Conversely, over 25% of SCs and 46.3% of STs remain in the lowest. These figures reflect not just economic inequality, but entrenched social stratification. “In The Great Gatsby, wealth alone cannot secure legitimacy or belonging,” says Mukherjee. “Similarly, in India, wealth accumulation doesn’t guarantee social acceptance or the erasure of caste-based discrimination.” The ‘green light’ still flickers Fitzgerald’s cautionary tale warns us of what happens when society confuses wealth with worth and opportunity with illusion. A hundred years later, India’s challenge is not just to dream big — but to make that dream possible for all. “The novel remains deeply relevant not only to Americans today but also to nations beyond America that look to it as a cultural crusader,” says Dr Gupta. The green light still flickers. The question is: who gets to chase it — and who is left staring at it from across the bay?
