No wonder Gatsby is frequently misunderstood: Most people won't have the experience needed to understand it until they're in their 30s, but we prescribe it for high schoolers year after year.

I think this is true of much of the traditional high school English curriculum. I was way ahead of most of my peers and still far too great an idiot to fully appreciate the novels we read. I have reread some of those classics as an adult and should probably read more of them.

I had similar questions regarding middle/high school literature studies. So many, so many ideas were out of reach from my soul when I was 15 (say the social contract by Rousseau). But maybe that was just emotional/existential immaturity on my part. Maybe some pupils, arguably a few, really had the maturity to connect with these themes. Maybe also, previous generations were more mature early on. I believe that in mathematics, in the 70s, it was expected to learn abstract algebra in high school, it college.

I suppose you could argue that it is a great book in terms of style and prose, which is why kids should be introduced to the work. I did not grow up in the US, so I have only first read it as a young adult and I vividly remember that the book was beautifully written. It was a joy to read, which I cannot say about all classics.

The article underlines that what you get out of Gatsby will change substantially with age, and even encourages a re-reading later to get a different understanding of the novel.

If a teenager’s understanding of it is ‘wrong’ according to you, that’s precisely the point. Perhaps the blame should be cast on a teacher’s poor explanation of it?

The skill american high schools actually teach is to confidently misunderstand the thing in ways that conform to current trends. I still remember the absolutely outrageous hot takes about The Divine Comedy that were taken seriously and encouraged by our Lit teacher.