The problem is that a lot of the themes and topics in the novel simply aren't relevant to teenagers, and won't be for years. It's why English teachers love the

The problem is that a lot of the themes and topics in the novel simply aren't relevant to teenagers, and won't be for years. It's why English teachers love the novel and students almost universally hate it. My English teacher also said as much at the time: most of us wouldn't appreciate this novel until well after college. We weren't forced to write a series of essays explaining how much we loved the book or how brilliantly written it was; that would have earned a D at best in any of the college-bound English classes in my district (and generally, in most other California school districts as well). We did have to write essays engaging with the themes and substantive content of the book (i.e., what ideas the book was conveying and how it did that, or tried to do that). The point of Gatsby was too see how (relatively) modern books engaged in the same sort of symbolism and symbolic discourse as "classical" works like Dickens. AP English classes were permitted to use more modern novels, and most did (the most recent novel we read as part of the course was the Shipping News.)