rereading-the-great-gatsby-in-the-post-pandemic-world-hope-disillusionment-and-social-changes-then-and-now 2021 2 Published in 1925, the novel The Great Gatsby was considered to be a failure initially and viewed as
one of the greatest works in American literature presently. The novel, inspired by a relationship
between F. Scott Fitzgerald and a young socialite, captured the spirit of the Jazz Age, the wild and
glittering parties common in the elite society of the time and the spirit of the roaring twenties, a
decade which was marked by the end of the Spanish flu pandemic and the World War 1. World War 1
killed millions, both soldiers in combat and civilians. The Spanish Flu pandemic death toll was even
higher – an estimated number of between 20 up to 50 million people, most of them young and
healthy, died after contracting the virus. The novel depicts the restlessness of the generation of people
who survived two cataclysmic events, the society grappled by profound changes and the
disappointment and disillusionment in the American Dream. The article was written in June 2021,
during the summer when most countries joyously greeted the ease of COVID-19 restrictive measures
and the rise of hope after vaccination rollouts started in many countries. As we reread The Great
Gatsby, we might ask ourselves about the future of our post-pandemic world. Will we learn
something from the past? Can we expect the roaring 2020s? Will we see the same joy, the same
recklessness and the carpe diem of the roaring 1920s? Will we return to the pre-pandemic normal –
the consumerism, the lack of consideration for the environment, the greediness which brought us here
to begin with?

]]> The Great Gatsby, historical context, war, pandemic, hope, consumerism American dream, disillusionment 2021-12-29 https://ijep.ibupress.com/articles/rereading-the-great-gatsby-in-the-post-pandemic-world-hope-disillusionment-and-social-changes-then-and-now 2 91-97 en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://ijep.ibupress.com/file/875/38-pdf.pdf Elena Spirovska South East European University true 2671-3535 2671-3543 Balkan University Press https://ijep.ibupress.com