Below is a structured, critical review of the between The Great Gatsby and the Holocaust. Review Title: The Great Gatsby and the Holocaust: Prophecy, Privilege, and the Politics of Exclusion 1. Thesis Summary While The Great Gatsby does not mention the Holocaust (it was written a decade before the Nazi rise to power), the novel provides a searing critique of eugenicist thinking, white supremacist ideology, and the moral emptiness of wealth —all of which were key ideological pillars in Nazi Germany. Reading Gatsby alongside Holocaust history reveals how Fitzgerald anticipated the dangers of romanticizing a “pure” past and dehumanizing outsiders. 2. Key Thematic Connections | Theme in Gatsby | Connection to Holocaust Context | |------------------|----------------------------------| | Tom Buchanan’s white supremacist rant (Chapter 1) – “It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.” | Directly echoes the Übermensch and racial purity ideology later used to justify the genocide of Jews, Roma, and others. | | Gatsby’s self-invention – James Gatz reinvents himself to escape his past. | Contrasts with Nazi racial laws, where Jewish identity was fixed by blood, not choice. Shows the fragility of identity in oppressive systems. | | The “valley of ashes” – A wasteland of the poor and forgotten, presided over by the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg. | Mirrors the industrialized death camps (Auschwitz, Treblinka) hidden in plain sight—places where human dignity is erased under the gaze of indifferent authority. | | Myrtle Wilson’s death – Killed by a wealthy, careless person (Daisy) who suffers no consequences. | Foreshadows how ordinary Germans could ignore or benefit from the suffering of victims without legal or moral accountability. | | The green light – An unattainable symbol of a mythic, perfect past. | Parallels the Nazi myth of a “pure” Germanic past (Blood and Soil), which was used to justify destroying the present reality. | 3. Scholarly Critique Historians like Timothy Snyder ( Black Earth ) argue that the Holocaust was enabled by the breakdown of state protections and the rise of a hyper-nationalist, anti-Semitic fantasy. Similarly, Fitzgerald shows how East Egg (old money, nativist) sees West Egg (new money, immigrant-adjacent) as a threat. Gatsby’s rumored background (“killed a man,” “German spy”) mirrors the antisemitic conspiracies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion .
This is an insightful request, as it connects two seemingly distinct subjects: the historical tragedy of the and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby (1925) . A proper review of this topic would not compare them directly, but rather analyze how Gatsby can be read as a prophetic literary text that explores themes— unchecked ambition, racial anxiety, nativism, and the dangers of mythologizing the past —which foreshadowed the social conditions that made the Holocaust possible in Europe. holocaust great gatsby