Money and Manners in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

During the 1920s, F. Scott Fitzgerald conveyed his disdain for the corruption within the American dream by depicting the immoral actions of society in his literature with a disapproving tone. Even though the country was economically prosperous, people increasingly lost much needed morals on their journey of the American Dream. Affairs and other sins took place with little guilt. People got caught up in the corruption around them in order to try to get their piece of the growing wealth. Without making some changes, society could have been on its way to self-devastation.

In today’s society, people are judged by their values or are frightened to take sacrifices to better benefit their lifestyle. Characters like Gatsby, Tom, Daisy and Myrtle are shown as evidence of greed and how wealth surrounds their values. Fitzgerald uses social commentary to offer a glance of an American life in the 1920s. He carefully sets up his novel into distinct groups, but in the end, each group has its own problems to contend with, leaving powerful ideas for readers to adapt(add morals characters inhabit). By creating distinct social classes, old money, new money, and no money, Fitzgerald sends strong messages about the elitism running throughout every perspective of society.

People say that "money makes the world go around." It may, but in the novel The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald money is what causes greed and death. The novel is filled with multiple themes but one predominate theme that the author focuses on is immorality. The novel was written in the1920s which was a time that drew away from social and moral values and yearned for its greed and empty pursuit of pleasure. Gatsby, gains his wealth through bootlegging only because he wants to show Daisy his wealth.

Throughout the book Fitzgerald uses strong rhetorical devices to show that Gatsby lives in the past, which he portrays as the undoing of wealthy society through Gatsby’s eventual fall. When reading the passage describing Gatsby‘s overwhelming feelings, you get a strong sense that Carraway clearly sees Gatsby’s internal world: even knowing that world better than Gatsby himself. Through this omniscient narrative perspective, the ...

Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted, even as she led him toward everything he despised. The author himself became the victim of that critical period when the Great Depression occurred in America he became the addict of alcoholism, which distracted his writing. Due to this, he wrote short stories to support his lavish lifestyle. Both the author and Gatsby’s dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object as the American dream in the 1920’s is ruined by the unworthiness of object, money and pleasure. Fitzgerald shows that the social classes represented in The Great Gatsby is of a running theme of how the American dream affects all of the characters and each of them have their own dreams for their own life but later they rush around money and the effects that we... ... middle of paper ... ...vel, women have played very negative role.

This was an era where societal values made wealth and material possessions a defining element of one’s character. The implications of the wealthy mindset and its effects on humanity are at the source of the conflict in The Great Gatsby, offering a glimpse into the despair of the 20’s. During a time of “postwar American society, its restless alienation, and its consequent reliance on money as a code for expressing emotions and identity” (Lewis, 46), Fitzgerald focuses his pen on the inevitable emptiness created by the illusions of wealth and its anomalous connection with love during the 20’s. In order to convey his theory, Fitzgerald builds a repertory of superficial characters whose existence revolves around material value rather than tangible human qualities. For example, Tom Buchanan, the husband of Daisy, is introduced as having an appealing and rich life.

These themes alone are a contrast, as money is a matter of the mind and love a matter of the heart. Although Fitzgerald glamorises the lifestyles of the rich minority, he also asks us to question how attractive money really is, by conveying to us the destruction and unhappiness that huge wealth can cause underneath its dazzling exterior. We are led through the various events of the novel by our narrator, Nick Carraway, who is also Gatsby's neighbour. Nick, despite being surrounded by e... ... middle of paper ... ...atsby's eventual death. Daisy, by killing a woman in Gatsby's car, represents the fact that unmaterialistic people are often downtrodden by the wealthy.

Digging deeper, however, it is clear that the novel is more than just a love affair between Gatsby and Daisy; rather it is an accurate reflection of the 1920s. The Great Gatsby depicts the corruption and human depravity of the times to illustrate how the American Dream is marked by greed and lack of moral values. Primarily, F. Scott Fitzgerald condemns the lack of morality during the 1920s in The Great Gatsby. His portrayal of the 1920s describes a time when society was very materialistic and was obsessed with money. People would do absolutely anything, no matter how unethical, to attain the American Dream; but what they did not realize was that money cannot buy happiness.

As soon as Gatsby’s parties come to a stop, he becomes a thing of the past. There are some references in the book to the attractiveness and importance of coming from old money. Gatsby is completely in fear of Daisy; at one point he states that “Her accent is full of money.” From those on the outside that are not madly in love with Daisy agree that her voice is full of money: Nick picks up on it when Gatsby comments and agrees with him, “I’d never understood it before. It was full of money – that was the endless charm that rose and fell in it”

In the stories, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, money and the amount that you have, proves to be the leading control factor in relationships and can destroy them easily. Research shows that the leading cause to relationships failing or divorce, is stress from money issues. When there is too little, stress levels rise. Too much, believe it or not, some people can’t agree how the excess money should be spent. Then we have wastefulness V.S.