People today may say that the Great Gatsby is a past time only relating to the 1920s. Yes the book does take place in the roaring 1920s, but the conflict within the book can still be related to today's society. The will power that Jay Gatsby shows to win back Daisy Buchanan can be related to many other modern people. Though The Great Gatsby takes place in the 1920s, and America as a whole has changed a lot through time with different cultures and advanced technology, The Great Gatsby still remains a profound foundation in American writing, yet the use of technology for conflicts is greatly higher in 2016 than 1925.

The Great Gatsby is still read today by many schools because of the significant literature portrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The theme of “time” was a big part in The Great Gatsby and has carried over to the modern world.  All people from different time periods throughout the world have dealt with the loss and meaning of time. James E. Miller agrees with what effect the importance of time has on the characters of The Great Gatsby, “In short, the novel embodies and expresses the simple, basic human desire and yearning universal in nature, to snatch something precious from the ceaseless flux and flow of days and years and preserve it outside the ravages of time. This is obviously a theme that is not confined to the 1920s or to America. Although it may not win the designation of “archetypal”, it is hard to imagine a time when human beings did not feel it deeply”(Miller 85). This shows that “time” as a theme will relate to any type of human age. People in the 1920s and today can relate to the loss and experience of time because they all know that one day they will soon run out of it.

Another way of how The Great Gatsby is still relevant today is the involvement the reader feels as he or she realizes the needs and wants of some characters are similar to the needs and wants as they have. When you are reading The Great Gatsby you can’t help by putting yourself in the shoes of the characters as you can relate to the conflicts and the storytelling of the book. Marcus Sankey felt that reader involvement was a big reason why The Great Gatsby is an ironic as it is. “Even the reader can’t help but feel involved: In the thousand wrongs and slights of everyday, in our selfish wants and our crueler rationalizations, we create and prolong the world Fitzgerald painted for us”(Sankey). Readers from the 1920s and today can relate to the level of involvement portrayed by Fitzgerald. Readers think of what they would do if they were in some of the situations that the characters were, many of them relate to a personal level. Reader involvement could be higher today than what it was back in the 1920s. People today like a good story telling that involves some type of violence and crime, The Great Gatsby portrays both of those. Book critic Maureen Corrigan thought that was a significant part for readers. “It's a violent story. There are three violent deaths in Gatsby. It's a story in which you get bootlegging, crime, explicit and sexuality”(Corrigan).  She believes that is the reason as to why readers of today still think of the book as an exciting novel to read. The novel tells an ancient story while still providing aspects that will still relate to modern day people.

The characters of a novel dictate whether or not the story is going in a right direction. They are what you are able to relate with when it comes to the events that happen in a novel. Some may say that The Great Gatsby still has its relevance by how the characters are similar to some modern day people. Characters like Daisy and Tom show their carelessness of events throughout the novel. Such as them putting Gatsby’s live in jeopardy and doing nothing to try to fix or help the situation. Alberto Lena saw both Tom and Daisy to be careless individuals that only cared for themselves. “The Great Gatsby can be seen not so much as an illustration of the decline of the Western world in general, or of American civilization in particular, but of individuals like Tom Buchanan, Daisy, and Jordan. After all, luck, rather than the system, sustains the Buchanans’ “vast carelessness.” Gatsby’s death is due to sheer accident, and not because he is too weak to continue his fight against Buchanan”(Lena 99). Carelessness has been used by people of all generations. People today show carelessness towards each other just how the characters from The Great Gatsby did. Actions from characters behavior can relate to the modern world.

Many people not only in America, but in the world are brought up of how their parents raised them, and what society they grew up in. Most of the characters from the Great Gatsby were brought up in the Mid-West. Nick seemed to be the only character that was brought up with decent morals. He was the only character that didn’t seem to care whether how much money you made. Nick says “I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth”(Gatsby 2). He knows that he was brought up with more luxuries than others, but didn’t let that change him into the type of character such as Tom, and Daisy. Some characters from the Great Gatsby were brought up with different morals. Characters such as Tom, and Daisy showed their carelessness throughout the novel, especially towards the end of the book. Book critic William Voegeli suggests that the carness and complexity of Nick was from how his father raised him. “Mr. Carraway gives young Nick advice millions of American fathers have given their sons, instructing him to think no worse of someone who has less money”(Voegeli). This relates to why the novel is still relevant because of the way people were brought up and acted. Like in the 1920s there were careless people like Tom, and Daisy, but there were also people like Nick that showed concern for problems related to carelessness. It is the same for modern day people, some bad people that mean well and some good people that will do whats right. This also shows that the environment that which people are raised up in will shape them into the person they are.

Another reason to why the Great Gatsby is still relevant to today's society is the use of drugs and illegal bootlegging. Throughout the novel there has been a question that people were trying to figure out. How did Gatsby get all his money? It was later revealed that Gatsby made most of his money through illegal bootlegging. Tom confronts Gatsby about his bootlegging, “He and this Wolfshiem bought up a lot of side-street-drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. Thats one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn’t far wrong”(Gatsby 133). Tom used this in an argument against Gatsby. James E. Miller tells us how what Mr. Wolfshiem and Gatsby were doing was an important part of the novel. “He lurks in the shadows behind Gatsby throughout, and when he emerges briefly in the restaurant scene in New York to have lunch with Gatsby and Nick, we glimpse something of his career in his short and sweet tale of the “night they shot Rosy Rosenthal”(Miller). This shows us how secretive Gatsby was about his career. In 1920, the transportation of illegal drugs and alcohol was a big part of society, and to this day it is still a problem. In the modern day, movies were written for entertainment purposes about illegal bootlegging. Some modern people might find entertainment from that aspect of the book.

In conclusion, The Great Gatsby still shows it has relevance to the modern world. Through characters, time, and luxuries The Great Gatsby relates to modern people and time and will carry that out into future generations.