Have you ever loved someone and or had moments in your life you wish you could get back and fix? To me the setting of Gatsby isn't relevant. Just as West Side Story re-imagined Romeo and Juliet I think Gatsby could easily be re-imagined in modern time. Focusing on the scenery is why, in my opinion, all the film adaptations were terrible. Gatsby isn't about parties and big cars. Those were all things he surrounded himself with for the sake of others. Gatsby himself was lonely, lost, intimidated, and in search for true North which he tragically assigned to Daisy. The Novel never seeks to redeem a single character. Everyone in the book is some combination of vacuous, pretentious,and petty. The narrator (Nick) is seemingly self aware yet still flawed and participated lazily in events. His natural dispassion for other subtle highlighted by his faux romance with Jordan. Everyone in the story sucked and the story knew it as the Narrator regularly laments about how ugly everyone is. It reminds my of my youth. We were all stupid, ignorant, and arrogant once.