Part 2: Chapters 21 - 26 Summary

The class devotes one final day to sum up Gatsby. Gatsby is about wealth, the fatal attraction to it, and its destructive power. It is about the American dream - a dream in which money is a means to an end. Money is the instrument needed to gain a kind of stature in society. But it is also about the fragility of dreams and the danger of possessing rather than respecting them. Possessing a dream often destroys it in the way that Humbert destroys Lolita.

After leaving Iran, Nafisi realizes the close parallels between the lessons of Gatsby and what was occurring in Iran at that time. Iran, or the revolution, had a perfect dream of itself with which it became obsessed. Any violence in pursuit of that perfection was forgivable. The dream is unattainable, making the obsession with...