Loss Of Morals And Values In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Drop Off

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates the forces and changes of the post world war one period in America. The War left people with a feeling to remove their grief. People looked for anything that could create pleasure, often leading to materialistic ideas. The young people of this time period felt hopeless, and aimless, causing a drop in morals and values. The Great Gatsby shows the loss of morals and values in the 1920’s through the characters behaviors, this can be seen with Tom, Gatsby, and Daisy.

World War One was devastating. The loss of life shocked many people. The need people felt to remove their grief from the war created an era of people who were lost and defeated. Slowly people’s morals and values started

The 1920’s American dream, had the idea that if a person worked hard enough, s/he could move from poverty to wealth. The 1920’s Dream changed to focus on materialistic goals such as who could throw the best party and who could own the biggest house. The shift from happiness and hope to materialistic goals in the American Dream led to a drop in morals and values. Middle and Lower class people of this time period would do anything to rise to the top, even if it were illegal. Achieving the American Dream in this time period was challenging to say the least. During the 1920’s hard work wasn’t enough to change a person’s social class, just as Gatsby had worked hard to become wealthy he could never become one of the social elite. People were either born into money or they weren’t, to most people it was something that was not changeable. Money played a big part in how people behaved towards

Gatsby is obsessed with wealth and the higher social class. Daisy Buchanan is someone Gatsby loves but he also loves the idea of her wealth and class. "Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly. That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money – that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it… high in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl […]” (Fitzgerald 120). If Gatsby could have Daisy in his life he could have the classy lifestyle every middle and lower class American dreams of. Jay Gatsby also embodies the surge of materialism during this era, he throws the biggest parties and owns the fanciest of things even down to the shirts. Gatsby has a loss of morals when he goes to great lengths to move from the lowest social class to the social elite. Gatsby’s appearance is much different from his reality, at first the reader is introduced to Gatsby as someone had a privileged upbringing and had been educated at Oxford, ’”Well he told me once he was an Oxford man”’(Fitzgerald 49). The reader later finds out that Gatsby has lied about his background. Gatsby was raised in poverty,”His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people-” (Fitzgerald 98) and had attended a small college for two weeks then dropped out, “An instinct