REREADING THE GREAT GATSBY IN THE POST PANDEMIC WORLD: HOPE, DISILLUSIONMENT AND SOCIAL CHANGES THEN AND NOW

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?