The Two Faces of Gatsby’s Parties
During the 1920’s, everyone is making easy money off the stock market and lives their lives to the fullest potential. The decade, also known as the Jazz Age, brings a lot of glamour into many households; one of which belongs to Jay Gatsby. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby shows his wealth by arranging humongous parties every so often. At these parties most of the people who are in attendance are uninvited, but at the same time are also very rich. Although Gatsby’s parties and the wealth they represent are initially portrayed as alluring and glamorous, in Chapter 3 Fitzgerald subtly undercuts the apparent allure and glamour of both through specific words and images he uses to describe the party scene and the behavior of the partygoers.
The scene appears alluring and glamorous, yet there is a subtext, an undercurrent of negative images and commentary running through much of Fitzgerald’s description which undercuts the apparent allure and glamour, suggesting the destructive side of wealth. Both, the positive and the negative images are represented when the servants, the setting and the entertainment are being described in the chapter. Behind the scenes of a beautiful party, there are those that do not have much fun; they are the hard working servants. These servants work long before the party starts to get it set up and during the party to keep everyone happy. Before the party starts the servants have the job of driving people over to the Gatsby’s house, and it is described in a following manner, “On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city…while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains.” From the impression, it seems like a normal preparation for the party which actually makes it sound very courteous, but a closer look at the description also reveals the hard work that the servants do in order to keep these parties on track. They are like a “brisk yellow bug” in a way that they give it their all to get their job done, but at the same time they are unappreciated and can be squashed like a “bug” when their services are not required anymore. During the preparations for the party and the clean up from the old one, there is another huge example of the mistreatment of the servants, “[servants] toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.
the 1920s as we can see with Gatsby's five cars, one of which he gives
Instead of focusing on the relationship between federal housing policy and segregation, as does Mohl, DiPasquale explores how rental housing and federal policies affect each other. In her article, “Rental Housing: Current Market Conditions and the Role of Federal Policy,” DiPasquale challenges the federal policies that were in place at the time she wrote her article. She brings to attention her belief that in the past, government policies have given much of their focus to homeowners and little to the renter. Through her research, DiPasquale had found that rental housing had become increasingly less affordable, especially to poorer tenants, who are spending a greater portion of their income on rent. This not only poses a problem to the renters, but also to the landlords, for if the renters cannot pay the rent, the landlords get a vacancy and no income from their property. She also asserts her belief that homeownership is not for everyone, and uses evidence from the recent housing crisis to support her claim. Her article calls for a revamping of current federal policies to level the playing field between home owning and renting. By doing so, households will have more choices available to them when it comes to choosing suitable housing for them
F. Scott Fitzgerald uses The Great Gatsby in order to display the wretchedness of upper-class society in the United States. The time period, the 1920s, was an age of new opulence and wealth for many Americans. As there is an abundance of wealth today, there are many parallels between the behavior of the wealthy in the novel and the behavior of today’s rich. Fitzgerald displays the moral emptiness and lack of personal ethics and responsibility that is evident today throughout the book. He also examines the interactions between social classes and the supposed noblesse oblige of the upper class. The idea of the American dream and the prevalence of materialism are also scrutinized. All of these social issues spoken about in The Great Gatsby are relevant in modern society. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses this novel as an indictment of a corrupt American culture that is still present today.
“So The Great Gatsby house at West Egg glittered with all the lights of the twenties, there were was always Gatsby’s supplicating hand, reaching out to make glamour with what he had lost be cruel chance...of how little Gatsby wanted at bottom-not to understand society, but to ape it”(21-22). The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald features constant parties, glamorous houses, and extravagance to reveal the values of the characters and the society they live in. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby exemplifies the innate values and morals of its characters and the society in which they live by using continual partying, glamorous houses, and extraordinary extravagance.
Summers is a very ironic and influential character in this story. When you think of summer you think of green growth, warmth, life and joy, but in this short story Mr. Summers is everything other than that. Mr. Summers is married to a woman, who was thought of as a “scold” and he has no children because he is infertile; ironic because the word summer is thought of as happiness and growth, therefore being infertile is the opposite of producing life. Mr. Summers also owns a coal plant; this is also ironic because coal is a combustible dark rock consisting mainly of carbonized plant matter, and found mainly in the ground. In the short story “Maus” the color black can be symbolized in the black and white panels, it brings suspense but more depth to the story. When taking a close look at the characters, you will notice that the cats are dark and bold; they have black helmets and guns. Nevertheless this can be thought of as a darker evil sense. Whereas, the white mice are forced to wear black suits because of the harsh rules the cats
Gender, as socially constructed differences between men and women and the beliefs and identities that support difference and inequality, is also present in all organizations (Gender & Society). It has been known that most women have continued to stick to the traditional jobs because it is just easier to do so. They do it to avoid any hardship in the work place and discrimination when applying for a job or working for a company. Non-traditional careers and jobs for woman are hard to find and when hired woman are segregated to the wage gap. Class relations in the workplace, such as supervisory practices or wage-setting processes, were shaped by gendered and sexualized attitudes and assumptions (Gender & Society). For example, in the work place managers were almost always men; the lower-level white-collar workers were always women (Gender &
As the lease of my apartment is coming to an end it had me thinking of achieving my own American Dream of home ownership but as I do my research I find the dream is far from coming true. I am sure that the issue of housing prices and rent rates are what most of us Bay Area residents talk about and debate. It is an issue that needs to be addressed by the officials of the area, city mayors, affordable housing committees, social justice activists,lawmakers, and even employers. Skyrocketing prices, low inventory, and investors’ bidding wars are not only pushing the middle and lower classes out of San Francisco and the Bay Area out but will completely eliminate them.
To illustrate, the parties that are hosted at Gatsby’s house are magnificent, filled with professional entertainment, music and dancers, and guests varying from politicians to movie stars. Fitzgerald paints the picture of the parties at Gatsby’s house in great detail in this passage “The bar is in full swing and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names.” (Fitzgerald 44). It can be seen that these were extravagant parties filled with lust and alcohol. The evidence shows that no ordinary man would be throwing parties of this form, only a man with great wealth and resources would pull of such a feat.
loses anything of value, of victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or
“The Great Gatsby”, by F. Scott Fitzgerald depicts the vast social difference between the old aristocrats, the new self-made rich and the poor. He vividly interprets the social stratification during the roaring twenties as each group has their own problems to deal with. Old Money, who have fortunes dating from the 19th century, have built up powerful and influential social connections, and tend to hide their wealth and superiority behind a veneer of civility. The New Money made their fortunes in the 1920s boom and therefore have no social connections and tend to overcompensate for this lack with lavish displays of wealth. As usual, the No Money gets overlooked by the struggle at the top, leaving them forgotten or ignored. Such is exemplified by Jay Gatsby, Myrtle Wilson and Tom Buchanan. Their ambitions distinctly represent their class in which Fitzgerald implies strongly about.
Gender discrimination in the workplace is something that both men and women experience, women more than men. For instance, the current gender pat gap is 21 percent. This means that women are currently making 21 percent less than what their male counterparts are making. It has decreased over the years, but it is still a significant gap. In the workplace, women do not only experience discrimination in pay, but also in opportunities. An article states that, women are deemed less communal than men and that makes them less suited for certain careers (Miner, et. al, 2014). This thought alone puts women at a disadvantage when they are entering the labor force.
But sex-segregation does not really explain the overall gender wage gap. Women’s average educational attainment now exceeds that of men’s and as a result, women have been entering previously considered to be “masculine” occupational fields at growing rates. Even in the STEM fields, women are no longer underrepresented except for in computer sciences and engineering. However, gender wage gap is present at every level of the career ladder in every field. How and why does this
Why are most brain surgeons and CEO's male? Why are most secretaries and nurses female? Why not female surgeons and male nurses? These are simple and frequent questions that can be answered by most Sociologist and Theorists. Sociologists and Theorists equate this type of job inequality phenomenon with occupational sex segregation. Sex segregation in the workplace is one of the most visible signs of inequality in the labor market. In almost every work setting, it is rare to see men and women working at the same job. When they do, they usually perform different tasks, with unequal levels of responsibility and authority. Even when job tasks are virtually identical, it is not uncommon to find men and women allocated to distinct job classifications within an organization. The two theoretical perspectives that I will discuss in order to explain this sex segregation are neo-classical and human capital theories, and institutional and labor market segmentation theories.
... the future. The housing industry in the United States is currently shrinking due to the recession and a drop in the employment rate in the country.