Examples Of Corruption In The Great Gatsby

Corruption is defined as “dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people; the act of corrupting someone or something” (“Corruption”). There is a lot of corruption in The Great Gatsby. In The Great Gatsby there are many characters that live a life of glamour and sophistication. Daisy is a young lady who lives in Westchester County, along the Sound. Tom is a man whom is married to Daisy; he is a man who has lived in the life of glamour for the whole of his life. Gatsby is someone who lives in West Egg, the place of “new money.” All of these people use their glamour and sophistication to hide illegal activity or affairs committed while still married.
Daisy becomes reunited with Jay Gatsby, a man that she loved five years ago, and begins to once again fall in love with Gatsby and thus has an affair, all while she is still married. Nick, Gatsby, and Jordan are at Tom and

One afternoon Nick, Gatsby, Tom, Daisy, and Jordan go to spend the day at a hotel in downtown New York. At the hotel, Gatsby makes the claim that Daisy never loved Tom, and that she has plans to leave him. Tom becomes extremely upset over this and, in an attempt to keep Daisy from leaving with Gatsby says, “I found out what your ‘drug-stores’ were.” Tom then began to rapidly speak to Nick, Jordan, and Daisy saying, “He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That’s one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn’t far wrong” (Fitzgerald 141). Tom revealed that he had been digging into Gatsby’s life, thus exposing that he was involved in illegal activities, to keep Daisy from leaving. This proves that Gatsby earned the money from his illegal business in order to get Daisy’s attention and