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connotations of wealth in the great gatsby
connotations of wealth in the great gatsby
wealthy americans in the 1920s
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There are many similarities that can be drawn between the rich of the 20s and the rich of today. There is supposedly a dream that Americans can rise from the bottom to the top, and be the happiest people in the world. But, Jimmy Gatz the poor farm boy who rises from the clutches of poverty to the ranks of the super wealthy was never content. Gatsby throws lavish parties, yet he is never truly happy, and lives in ignorance of the conditions that affect the impoverished. Gatsby lived through conditions at a farm in North Dakota that should happen to no one, but that does not excuse the attitude that he has adopted towards the poor. That attitude is strikingly similar to the attitude that today’s super wealthy class within America that has been accepted as a norm. Jay Gatsby shows the narcissism that can link him to the rich throughout the modern world. Super wealthy, crooked businessman Jay Gatsby has many behaviors that bond the imaginary character from the 20s with real people of the twenty-first century.
The super wealthy society in the modern world has attempted to buy political influence by contributing millions towards campaigns. Meet Charles Koch, billionaire owner of Koch Industries Inc. who singlehandedly contributed over “2.2 million dollars” (Gilson) to political campaigns in the last election cycle. Gatsby has bought out the police commissioner and a senator in an attempt to gain freedom from the laws that are supposed to govern all the United States’ people. Gatsby wants to be able to act nefariously while the authorities turn a blind eye. According to Gatsby he “was able to once do the commissioner a favor.” (Fitzgerald 73) A presumption that this favor involved some sort of monetary sum that managed to accommodate ...
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...The Great Gatsby to the rich of today.
Works Cited
Appleyard, Bryan. "The Age Of Entitlement." New Statesman 142.5143 (2013): 26-29. Literary Reference Center. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, and Matthew J. Bruccoli. The Great Gatsby. New York, NY: Scribner, 1996.
Gabbey, Tiffany. "Elizabeth Warren On Class Warfare: 'There Is Nobody in This Country Who Got Rich On His Own'" The Blaze. 21 Sept. 2011. Web. 05 May 2014.
Gilson, Dave. "Charts: How Much Have the Kochs Spent on the 2012 Election?"Mother Jones. Mother Jones, Nov.-Dec. 2012. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
Langfitt, Frank. "Gatsby-Like Extravagance And Wealth ... In Communist China." All Things Considered (NPR)(2013): Newspaper Source. Web.
Ryscavage, Paul. Income Inequality In America : An Analysis Of Trends. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1999. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 13 Apr. 2014.