Than you, that’s really interesting, because I think it’s true that I’m culturally trained not to see seeking wealth or status as heroic. People do it of course, but it’s not something you are supposed to draw attention to, so people have to find subtle ( and often hypocritical) ways to flaunt their wealth and power. And heroism is associated with selflessness, being flashy or ambitious is kind of contradictory to the concept as I learned it.

I’m not American, have never been to the USA, and have lived most of my life in Europe. I liked the book and can appreciate the characters - there are people like the Buchanans every where, as are elements of Gatsby’s personality. For me it is a tragic story about a man who ruins his life and corrupts himself trying to impress awful people. He wasted his time and talents and eventually his happiness and his life on a completely worthless goal. Daisy is vile and what she seems to represent to Gatsby, the acceptance of her class, was never worth anyone’s spit let alone soul. Delusion and disillusionment too late is a story that can be understood universally.

I do get the impression that the book means something more or different to Americans though. I don’t see the romance or the misled heroism the narrator and apparently many US readers see, nor do I feel any of the glamour that’s supposed to be there. Gatsby throwing his money around gave me second hand embarrassment for him, it was quite uncomfortable to read.

One of the big uses of fiction is to provide a safe space for people to explore their fears, and a lot of women are scared of gendered violence - these books are far more popular with women. Popular fiction with this theme usually provides a situation where that fear is provoked in the reader but somehow overcome or resolved in the story, which is comforting, even when the reader knows it’s unrealistic.

A lot of fiction is built around this. We don’t expect men to want to be beaten up just because they play combat games or action flicks, they watch them partly because they wonder if they could face that situation. People watch supernatural horror because they remember being afraid of the dark, not because they want to be killed by a monster.

Of course there is some writing aiming for sadistic titillation or to express misogyny but the target audience for that usually isn’t into reading fiction, it requires empathy.