My interest in literature lies at the intersection with politics and society.

I resonate with the principle that art asks questions. In decades and centuries past, art was particularly important to the masses to question society at a time when that was often forbidden, forcing the use of metaphors. Literature, plays, opera and so on.

So a result of this is that as a general rule conservative political movements cannot produce art because they don't want people to ask questions. They want to give them answers that they take unquestionably in a similar way to how religious dogma is propagated.

So you see how fascist movements, most notably the Third Reich, have treated art and have sought "objective" beauty in an acceptable aesthetic and have denounced actual art as degenerate, even subversive, leading to such terms as "cultural Bolshevism".

So I see the Great Gatsby as questioning the very society of the Roaring Twenties where you might otherwise see it more superficially as simply depicting that era. It's historically noteworthy that it was released in 1925, well before the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that was (IMHO) the inevitable consequence of an era of great inequality where wealth was accumulated, even then, through financialization. Lest we forget Nick was a bond salesman.

And on top of this system we have Tom and Daisy who are essentially parasitic, who float through life with no regard for the consequences of their actions, who produce and give back nothing in spite of their wealth and status. Other, most notably Gatsby himself, pay the price for their reckless disregard.

I first read the Great Gatsby before the dot-com bust but it seems like you can draw many parallels with the post-GFC tech boom. This is why, for me at least, the Great Gatsby is inherently anti-capitalist.