Social Classes In The Great Gatsby By Pierre Bourdieu

Hegemony

Pierre Bourdieu describes how social class / rankings is innate and humans automatically categorize other humans into the categories that they deem fit for based off of materialistic items. He describes that social agents are implemented and embodied into humans from the time they were born. “The cognitive structures which social agents implement in their practical knowledge of the social world are internalized, ‘embodied’ social structures. The practical knowledge of the social world that is presupposed by ‘reasonable’ behaviour within it implements classificatory schemes (or ‘forms of classification’, ‘mental structures’ or ‘symbolic forms’ - apart from their connotations, these expressions are virtually interchangeable)”. In other

In the great gatsby, social classes are categorized by “old money” and “new money” , they are both the same thing, but what sets them apart is how they spend their money. The “new money” like Gatsby, live in the west egg and spends his money on flashy things, such as his car, a new and sparkling rolls royce; the “old money” such as the east egg, aren't as irresponsible with their wealth and don't have to “stand out” amongst the crowd. “I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.” In this quote, Nick says that people are actually pretty decent human beings from birth, even if they are born

In the article “What Would Veblen Say?” David Scott writes that, “During the Gilded Age, elites paid exorbitant sums of money on clothes, jewelry, art, servants, travel, carriages and yachts, homes, and parties to display their social position.” In other words, Scott is saying that people use objective things to make themselves superior to other beings. By wearing that jewelry and having the parties and things of that such, you would have a significant boost in your social rank because of how you represent yourself in front of the public society. In the great gatsby, Jay Gatsby has a library that he shows off to make himself look superior. “‘Absolutely real — have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real. Pages and — Here! Lemme show you.’” When Gatsby shows Jordan and the other about the library, saying the pages are really real and insisting to give a small presentation, he is trying to make it seem as though he can compete with the level of wealth that they