September 15, 2132

According to a recent study conducted by Harvard University, it is now literally impossible for a student to write an essay pertaining to the themes or symbolism in the popular F. Scott Fitzgerald novel The Great Gatsby without it technically being considered plagiarism.

“I’ve had a number of instances where students would ‘accidentally’ plagiarize another piece of work,” says Eugene Smith, an English professor. “Sometimes what they write just happens to be almost identical to what someone else wrote. This was less of a problem earlier in the century, but lately… every essay seems identical to one I’ve already read before.”

The study claims that, due to the sheer quantity of papers written on The Great Gatsby, there are “virtually no formations of words pertaining to symbolism and/or theme in The Great Gatsby that have not already been written at least once. Henceforth, any organization of words about the aforementioned novel will, inevitably, bare enough resemblance to at least one, but probably many more, previous writings on the subject, and would therefore technically be considered plagiarism. It’s now linguistically impossible to say anything about The Great Gatsby that has not already been said multiple times, almost verbatim, no matter what.”

One English teacher, who wished to remain anonymous, said that he gave up entering students’ essays into plagiarism detecting programs, as they always showed up multiple results, dating back for decades, even when no conscious plagiarism was performed.

Teachers are currently debating whether to finally remove The Great Gatsby from the curriculum, as there is now “literally nothing left to say about it.”