•Why it earns a slot
The Great Gatsby crystallized the mythology and moral bankruptcy of the American Dream in a single Jazz Age fable, and its closing image of boats against the current has become one of the most quoted sentences in American literature.
Narrated by bond salesman Nick Carraway, the novel follows his mysterious neighbor Jay Gatsby, a self-invented millionaire who throws lavish Long Island parties in hopes of reuniting with his lost love, the married Daisy Buchanan. The reunion briefly reignites their affair, but the collision of Gatsby's romantic illusions with the careless cruelty of the wealthy ends in multiple deaths and Gatsby's complete abandonment by those he sought to impress. Nick, disillusioned, returns to the Midwest, leaving behind a world he judges as morally hollow.
This distillation is written from the freely available original, which is always the better read when you have the time: gutenberg.org.