Gatsby Lens Paper The Great Gatsby takes place in the 1920’s, a time of extravagant wealth for the few, generated at the expense of the many. At this time, working men and women toiled their lives away in factories and mines run by companies who gave no care to their health, safety or material conditions. These workers lost the protection and representation provided by unions which were systematically suppressed and often cracked down upon by the forces of the state and the goons of capitalist interests alike. Reckless investors and corporations gambled with the capital generated by their labor, and the fate of the American economy, in the irresponsible and unregulated casino of Wall Street. This racket of influence, power, and profit churned …show more content…
Gatsby throws nearly constant, extravagant parties in the pursuit of a superfluous ideal as a sort of way to give his life meaning after having achieved his goal of self enrichment. These parties are massively expensive, wasteful, and irresponsible, they each probably cost more than a worker in the valley of ashes makes in their entire life but Gatsby doesn’t care because he is the only person that matters to himself. Even his “love” for Daisy is tied up in a self-mythologized and egotistical vision of himself. When he took control of the car after Daisy hit Myrtle he did not stop the car because it would have burdened him and hampered his ambitions. This selfish worldview has been manifest in Gatsby his entire life, he left his family farm because he thought he was too good for it, he dropped out of college because it wasn’t enriching him fast enough, and he turned to crime because it was the quickest and easiest way to achieve the life of wealth and power that he worshipped. Daisy is much the same in this respect. She got back together with Gatsby because she thought he was now financially stable and left him when Tom revealed evidence to the contrary. Daisy is so far removed from responsibility and so immersed in her life of luxury and decadence that she practically ignores the existence of her daughter Pammy, leaving her upbringing to a …show more content…
Gatsby is the son of dirt-poor midwestern farmers and after years of unsuccessful attempts to realize his dream of exorbitant wealth through legitimate means he recognized that due to the immense disadvantage at which his class background put him the only way to satisfy his yawning greed was by indulging in crime and corruption. Gatsby also realized that the capitalist class which he intended to join had essentially supplanted the despotic role that the church and nobility had once held in society. These ambitions are clearly alluded to by his palatial mansion, of which Nick says “...I stared at it, like Kant at his church steeple, for half an hour. A brewer had built it in the “period” craze a decade before, and there was a story that he’d agreed to pay five years taxes on all the neighboring cottages if the owners would have their roofs thatched with straw.” ( Fitzgerald 88 ). Nick mentions Immanuel Kant, an Enlightenment philosopher who after staring at a church steeple in the center of his town realized the central role the church played in society and became very critical of the power that it held. Nick also mentions that the builder of the mansion wanted the neighboring cottages to be thatched with straw in order to resemble the dwellings of medieval peasants who were forced to serve their local lords who lived in grand estates which
Money is something that can either be used for the greater good of society, or it can be contorted into something that is detrimental to society, it all depends on whose hands that money happens to fall into. Human tendencies begin to change once people come to have money, the lavish and selfish lifestyle begins. Entitlement comes with having money because money gives people what they want which makes people think they are entitled to get everything they want. In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald portrays that money is the root of all problems with can ultimately lead to loneliness and careless behavior.
The Great Gatsby displays how the time of the 1920s brought people to believe that wealth and material goods were the most important things in life, and that separation of the social classes was a necessary need. Fitzgerald’s choice to expose the 1920s for the corrupt time that it really was is what makes him one of the greatest authors of his time, and has people still reading one of his greatest novels, The Great Gatsby, decades
During the time in our country's history called the roaring twenties, society had a new obsession, money. Just shortly after the great depression, people's focus now fell on wealth and success in the economic realm. Many Americans would stop at nothing to become rich and money was the new factor in separation of classes within society. Wealth was a direct reflection of how successful a person really was and now became what many people strived to be, to be rich. Wealth became the new stable in the "American dream" that people yearned and chased after all their lives. In the novel entitled the great Gatsby, the ideals of the so called American dream became skewed, as a result of the greediness and desires of the main characters to become rich and wealthy. These character placed throughout the novel emphasize the true value money has on a persons place in society making wealth a state of mind.
The quote, “Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.” by Enrich Fromm truly describes the effect greed can cause others. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald and the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare various themes are shown throughout. One of the most important themes is greed for wealth and power. These works focus on the impact greed for wealth and power causes on the main character and how it affects their relationships with others. At first, these characters are so infatuated by what they want that they do not realize the harm they are causing. However, as these works continue each character reaches a moment of epiphany realizing how
When he first meets Daisy, Gatsby becomes infatuated with his idea of her, or rather, the false persona that she creates of herself. In fact, Gatsby reveals that “she was the first ‘nice’ girl he had ever known” (155). Gatsby was so impressed with Daisy mainly because of her wealth and her status; it is what he wants. However, Daisy chooses Tom Buchanan over Gatsby, solely because of his social status. As a result, Gatsby revolves his whole life around her: he becomes wealthy, creates a new image of himself, and buys a house across the bay from Daisy. For instance, he fabricates lies about how “ [he is] the son of some wealthy people in the middle-west” (69) and how “ [he] was brought up in America but educated at Oxford” (69) in order to impress her. These lies end up altering others’ perspectives of him - not necessarily in a positive way - and impacting his life as a whole. Daisy unwittingly transforms Gatsby into a picture-perfect image of the 1920s: lavish parties, showy cars, and a false illusion of the attainment of the American Dream. Despite Gatsby’s newfound wealth and success, he never fully accomplishes his dream: to get Daisy. Gatsby’s final act for the sake of Daisy has no impact on her feelings towards him. When Gatsby claims that he crashed into Myrtle and killed her, Daisy carelessly lets him do so, which ultimately results in his death. To make
Gatsby has all the money yet he is not happy when he throws gigantic parties at his house. Daisy, the one he tried to lure in with his parties, never cared to show up. The love shown by Gatsby towards Daisy, “’I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed. Good night, old sport.’ He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house as though my presence marred the sacredness of the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight – watching over nothing” (Fitzgerald 145).
Gatsby and Greed In this day and age, money is a very important asset to have. One needs to have at least enough to live on, though great amounts are preferable. In The Great Gatsby, by Thomas F. Fitzgerald, having a large amount of money is not enough. It is also the way you acquire the money that matters.
In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a young man named Nick Carraway moves to Long Island, New York in pursuit to learn the bond business. He moves into the “new rich” neighborhood of West Egg. Throughout the story Nick meets and gets to know Jay Gatsby, along with other characters, and ultimately learns that the desire for success and the American Dream have been corrupted.
“Greed is so destructive. It destroys everything” Eartha Kitt (BrainyQuote). F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby is about a man named Gatsby, who is trying to regain the love of a girl who he used to date to get back together with him. Gatsby’s only problem is that Daisy, the girl he is in love with is married to Tom. The story is told through the eyes of Nick Carraway, Daisy’s second cousin, once removed, and Gatsby’s friend. This allows the reader to know about Tom’s secret relationship with Myrtle Wilson and also allows the readers insight into Gatsby. According to Dictionary.com greed is “excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions”(Dictionary.com). Gatsby tries to get Daisy to fall in love with him, even though she is married to Tom. Gatsby throws elaborate parties that last all weekend in the hopes that Daisy will attend one. Greed is a major villain in The Great Gatsby through Gatsby’s chasing of Daisy, Myrtle’s cheating, and people using Gatsby simply for his wealth.
In the book, he is known for being immensely rich and for throwing extravagant parties. One would think that someone so rich, with people always around him would never be empty and lonely. Yet, this is not the case for Gatsby, he is as lonely and empty as ever. Despite his wealth and fortune, Gatsby is not content and never will be until he obtains the one thing he’s ever wanted - Daisy. Because of his obsession everything he values and accomplished is based off of her, she is the only thing that matters to him. As demonstrated in the book, “The whole caravansary had fallen in like a house of cards at the disproval in her eyes” (109). This quote shows that the things Gatsby has and values are likely to change based off of Daisy’s opinion. Sadly, the reality is that he was never able to win over Daisy. Unfortunately, he will remain forever empty, longing for his life to be filled with
...characters of the novel, and they were forced to completely reconsider their lives, financial decisions, and priorities. The issues faced by the novel’s characters were real-life tragedies so many Americans went through at the end of the Roaring Twenties. The Great Gatsby captured these aspects of what the people, places, and events of the 1920s were really like before the Great Depression – the beginning of the end – took hold over the entire country.
The Great Gatsby is an American novel of hope and longing, and is one of the very few novels in which “American history finds its figurative form (Churchwell 292).” Gatsby’s “greatness” involves his idealism and optimism for the world, making him a dreamer of sorts. Yet, although the foreground of Fitzgerald’s novel is packed with the sophisticated lives of the rich and the vibrant colors of the Jazz Age, the background consists of the Meyer Wolfsheims, the Rosy Rosenthals, the Al Capones, and others in the vicious hunt for money and the easy life. Both worlds share the universal desire for the right “business gonnegtion,” and where the two worlds meet at the borders, these “gonnegtions” are continually negotiated and followed (James E. Miller). Gatsby was a character meant to fall at the hands of the man meant to be a reality check to the disillusions of the era.
In conclusion, The Great Gatsby reveals the carelessness and shallowness of the characters in the upper class. Society is totally corrupted and the character’s lives revolve around the money and extravagant lifestyles. All of the characters are surrounded with expensive and unnecessary itms, which in turn, dulls their dream of actual success. Scott F. Fitzgerald provides a powerful and everlasting message of a corrupt, materialistic society and the effects that it has on the idea of the American dream.
‘The Great Gatsby’ is social satire commentary of America which reveals its collapse from a nation of infinite hope and opportunity to a place of moral destitution and corruption during the Jazz Age. It concentrates on people of a certain class, time and place, the individual attitudes of those people and their inner desires which cause conflict to the conventional values, defined by the society they live in. Gatsby is unwilling to combine his desires with the moral values of society and instead made his money in underhanded schemes, illegal activities, and by hurting many people to achieve the illusion of his perfect dream.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald took place in the 1920’s when the nation was undergoing rapid economic, political, and social change. Looking through different literary lenses the reader is able to see the effects of these rapid changes. The marxist lens reflects the gap between rich and poor while the feminist lens showcases the patriarchal society.