Examples Of Extravagance In The Great Gatsby

For all the remarkable effort that can be observed within the lines and scenes of the Great Gatsby, this elegance did not extend into my enjoyment of the novel; while nonetheless being a good novel, the text never transcended into that of a remarkable and memorable text, instead remaining a simply okay reading. All the actions and conflict of the Great Gatsby can be essentially summarized as that of bourgeois extravagance. Gatsby's parties by far embody this theme as Nick first describes the enormity of citrus brought into the mansion every Monday only to leave the following day “in a pyramid of pulpless halves” produced by “a little button pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb” (Fitzgerald 43-44). Focusing upon the butler’s work exemplifies

The food and staff present how wasteful and frivolous the whole affair is, as this extravagance is not for some single special occasion, but rather an almost daily occurrence for whoever shows up. Actually the motivation for these parties lies within how Gatsby hopes how constantly hosting parties may facilitate “a moment of magical encounter” for Daisy which “would blot out five years of unwavering devotion” (Fitzgerald 115). This ludacris reasoning of wasting perhaps thousands of dollars in the hopes that a woman, who does not know that Gatsby is living there, will by chance stumble onto the party and then fall in love with Gatsby again, despite having moved on, drives Gatsby in his efforts. He wrongly believes that he may “repeat the past” (Fitzgerald 116) and the central plot of the book essentially hinges upon Gatsby squandering money in the hopes of solving the problem without doing anything to actually fix his relationship with