Tom has an open relationship while married to Daisy with a mistress and attempts to make Daisy jealous through his love to Myrtle. Gatsby fabricates a false reality of wealth in order to love Daisy but his love is ultimately masked by greed. Gatsby began to realize that his love for Daisy was no longer existed and that it had been replaced with greed. Gatsby began to have a faint doubt in his happiness and realized that everything associated with Daisy even her voice was correlated with wealth.
In his novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, conveyed his belief that wealth and materialism corrupted the American Dream. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald shows his disapproval of the times by portraying characters attempting to achieve their American Dream by any means possible. Myrtle Wilson, a low class inhabitant of the valley of ashes, puts her morals to the side when pursuing the wealthy life. Not even marriage stops Myrtle from having an affair with Tom Buchanan-- a rich man who enables her to finally buy the life she thinks she deserves. Not only does Myrtle cheat on her own husband, but she has an affair with someone who caught her eye with "a dress suit and patent leather shoes and [she] couldn't keep [her] eyes off him" (Fitzgerald 40).
It characterizes him as a person with illegibility in methods to achieve the goal. However, his dream of happiness in personal life was broken and brought disappointment as Daisy seemed more impressed with his shirts rather than his diligence to reach the success and stand on the same step of the social welfare stairs as she. “It makes me sad because I have never seen such-such beautiful shirts before” Daisy’s words convey the grotesque satirical reality of their first date after five years (Fitzgerald 92). Secondly, the reader can observe his unlawful activity; Gatsby unscrupulous in a ways to get rich; Nick Caraway finds that later when some person calls the Gatsby’s house and mistakenly tells about their fraudulent activities (Fitzgerald 166). The scandalous scene of revelation of the affair between Daisy and Gatsby shows how money spoiled Gatsby; he did not care of his enrichment methods.
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.
Scott Fitzgerald, two characters, Myrtle Wilson and Jay Gatsby suffered although different in social class appearance and gender, suffer from the inability to differentiate between illusions and reality, causing their downfalls. Myrtle and Gatsby have similar goals, but different ambitions. Gatsby wants to achieve wealth for the sole purpose of regaining his previous love interest, Daisy, where as Myrtle wants to obtain wealth for her selfish desire of status and integration into the upper class. However, they both begin their journeys to downfall when they sacrifice all morality for this wealth. Gatsby becomes a criminal, and seduces a married woman and ultimately break up her family for his own selfish goal of winning his old love back.
Gatsby is mistaken to believe that attaining Daisy would bring him happiness, similar to how the society is mistaken to believe that wealth is the key to happiness and nobility. On the contrary, Fitzgerald demonstrates that the greed for wealth causes social injustice, and deteriorates the moral fabric of the society.
Gatsby, gains his wealth through bootlegging only because he wants to show Daisy his wealth. Sadly, his determination for his love is what gets him killed. The author uses different characters throughout the novel to present his theme. Symbols can also be found in The Great Gatsby. An example would be West Egg which represents the recent rich and East Egg which represents the established upper classes.
The false identity shows the corruption behinds the American Dream; Gatsby needs to be someone else to pursue this dream. In other words, the social feelings of the 1920s bring Gatsby to change himself in order to fit in the new society. Moreove... ... middle of paper ... ...nts to share it with the society. Having a mistress makes him feel good because he is superior to someone and he feels in control of the situation. Given these points, because of the importance of being rich in the society, Tom becomes selfish by wanting always a little more.
When exposed to the society during World War I, he becomes obsessed with members of the wealthy upper class, such as Daisy, whose voice is "full of money" (127). Finally, Gatsby feels that wealth is the only su... ... middle of paper ... .... A. Gatsby believed wealth would win acceptance, Willy believed being well liked would get financial success 1. "no real right to touch her hand" lacked real resources, "he let her believe that he was a person from much the same strata as herself" (Fitzgerald 156) 2. Well "liked ... you will never want" (Miller 33) B. Gatsby set concrete long-term goals, Willy looked for the quick fix 1. Gatsby developed self-improvement activities "elocution [and] poise," physical exercises, and the study of technology (Fitzgerald 181) 2.
However, as money became easy to get and as social values loosened up, the American Dream changed, turning it into an immoral and corrupt passion. In the Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby dedicates his life to reunite with Daisy, his love of his life. However, there is a difference in social status between her and him, forcing Jay Gatsby to turn into illegal crime and bootlegging to become wealthy quickly. Instead of nobly achieve such status; Gatsby turns to an illicit lifestyle to pursuit an empty happiness, which he never achieves. As Jay Gatsby pursues this dream, his dream itself becomes corrupted, as the way he achieves his dream is immoral and ill passion.