“Claude Opus 4.1, De-Carcinize the Great Gatsby” (That was the only prompt) Pretty clever, actually.

## Chapter 9: The End Without Shells Gatsby, still alive, realized his obsession was unhealthy. He sold his house and moved to California to start fresh. Nick wrote in his journal: “Today I learned that approaching life directly, without sideways scuttling or defensive shells, leads to less tragedy but also less poetry. The green light across the bay was just a light. The eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg were just an advertisement. And we all moved forward, not backward, walking upright instead of sideways, exposed but honest.” Tom and Daisy stayed married, openly acknowledging their mutual dysfunction. Myrtle left Wilson and opened a successful boutique. Jordan became a professional golfer who actually followed the rules. And Nick? Nick went back to the Midwest immediately instead of lingering to narrate everyone else’s drama. ## Epilogue So we beat on, boats moving directly forward with the current, making excellent time to our clearly stated destinations, no longer crushed by the weight of our own protective shells or the insistence on moving sideways when forward was always an option. *The End* ----- *Author’s Note: In this de-carcinized version, all characters have shed their protective shells of pretense, ceased their sideways approaches to truth, and emerged from the murky bottom-feeding of their social world. Without their crab-like qualities, they resolve conflicts with unsettling efficiency, proving that sometimes evolution’s mistakes make for better literature.*

This is pretty funny and Claude knows it.