I promised the editor that I would not write another letter about Trump for four years, because he (Trump, not the editor) is just too depressing.

Since I wrote that, I have found a new way of thinking, and the editor has the fortune (or not) of a new letter. My new thinking is this: Trump is a character out of The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel about the corruption of the American Dream.

Where else could we get an American literature lesson than in the real-life persona of our president? What an incredible opportunity for our high school teachers! Gatsby is “ash gray,” lives in a “valley of ashes, a wasteland,” and gray men move dimly and are already crumbling in the powdery air.

Does that not describe Trump’s cabinet? Is the Cabinet not populated by crude and garish suits, shirts, snooty attitudes, fearfully perched above the struggles of the poor? Is there not enough racism, social climbing, and fear of women to populate all of Gatsby’s Long Island?

Gatsby escapes his “peasant beginnings” through conspicuous consumption, his materialism, and his ostentation, which he mistakenly believes is the American Dream. What Fitzgerald understands, and Gatsby does not, is that spiritual emptiness and materialism always lead to a tragic death.

What a unique American literature lesson. Right in front of our eyes. In real life. The ultimate reality show of a classic American novel.

Stephen Armstrong

Hadley