Examples Of Materialism In The Great Gatsby

Ashes to Ashes, Dreams to Dust
In a society overrun by aggressive capitalism, the poisonous tendrils of materialistic motivations seep through the glamourous surface, revealing the corrupt core of the once noble American Dream, writes Keeley Brettell The concept of a fair go is to Australia what the American Dream is to America. It defines us. It directs us. But, just as predicted by Scott F. Fitzgerald’s almost a century ago, it decays. And with it so do we: from an egalitarian nation to a stratified parody with an ever growing gulf between the rich and poor and an ever shrinking middle class. To a future poisoned by materialism, greed, and inequality.
Stripped bare, Fitzgerald’s novel, ‘The Great Gatsby’, is about one thing: a search for moral order. Played

Ultimately Nick acts as Fitzgerald’s voice to critique the American Dream, in its empty promises and ruinous ends.
And critique he does. Fitzgerald scathingly deconstructs the American Dream, and by extension the almost globally echoed aspirations. The target of his scepticism? Capitalism. The foul dust that permeates the veins of the society just under the apparently glittering surface, poisoning America’s lifeblood with the relentless pursuit of wealth. It is the single-minded capitalist focus on wealth, Fitzgerald maintains, that has led to the decay of the dream from its originally pure ideals.
Fitzgerald’s construction of the setting of the Valley of Ashes, a dismal town between West-Egg and New York, shows American Dream’s toxic truth: materialism; hopelessness; failure. As Carraway (rather bluntly) observes upon entering George Wilson’s garage and livelihood, “the interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the dust covered wreck of a ford which crouched in a dim