Elaine Grace Rasonable Ms. Matlen AP English Language 12 November 2013 Money’s Power to Segregate a Society In the novel Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrates the segregation of the society into different social classes in the 20th century. Fitzgerald uses vivid visualization of the settings of the East and West Egg and Valley of Ashes to represent the environment of the people from both high and low class. He also introduces different characters who eventually reveal their personalities and behaviors towards gaining and maintaining their wealth and power. Additionally, Fitzgerald focuses on the contrast between the “old money”, who are the people who automatically possess great affluence even before they are born, and the “new money”, …show more content…
Wilson, the low class, and the servants of Gatsby. He describes Gatsby’s mansion when he indicates, “The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard – it was factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion” (Fitzgerald 9). Fitzgerald expounds very thoroughly to clarify distinction between wealthy and impecunious people. Unlike the filthy conditions of the Myrtle and Mr. Wilson’s residence from the Valley of Ashes, Fitzgerald shows that Gatsby’s environment is very different from the needy people. He mentions that Gatsby’s mansion is very gigantic and very deluxe that it is comparable to the Hotel de Ville in Normandy. He even adds that it has a tower on its side and marble swimming pool to imply that Gatsby’s wealth is extraordinary and he is very opulent that he possesses these precisely luxurious features of his mansion. Fitzgerald shows a very huge distinction between the wealthy and the insolvent people, because compare to the “ash-like quality” of the houses of the Wilson, Gatsby’s mansion is beyond ritzy. However, unfortunately, these indulgent
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby explores the issues of society and the hierarchy of social class. The three homes belonging to Daisy and Tom Buchanan, Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway, are all in the vicinity of each other, which illustrates the close proximity of their three lives, and foreshadows how they end up intertwining. Myrtle and George Wilson’s home is between the Buchanan’s and Gatsby’s, in the Valley of Ashes, and eventually comes to represent the failure of the American Dream. The homes in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby represent the different characteristics of their dwellers. Gatsby is a man with a one track mind, while Nick is simple and sensible. The Buchanan 's are unashamedly opulent, while the Wilson 's are poor
The emerging inequitable class systems and antagonisms of the nineteen twenties saw the traditional order and moral values challenged, as well as the creation of great wealth for few and poverty for many. The Great Gatsby, written by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, explores the causes and effects of the unbalanced class structures. Fitzgerald outlines the idea that the desire to accumulate wealth and status is a common ambition amongst the lower classes; when that desire is reached, the traditional upper class is challenged by the emerging newly wealthy, which finally leads to destructive consequences. By creating rigid class structures, traditional upper class, new wealth, and the poor in The Great Gatsby, it is shown that the desire to further or maintain socio-economic status leads to immoral behaviour such as criminal activity, adultery, and murder.
A prime example of all that is displayed in the novel would come from the clear cut descriptions of the East and West Egg neighborhoods. Subsequently, the treatment of lower class citizens also paves the way in which this story is set, from one extreme to the other. Therefore, in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the capitalistic environment directly correlates to the socially and economically broken down society, and contributes to the division of wealth amongst
In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald emphasizes the demise of the American Dream. Through greed, pursuit of empty pleasures and cynicism many characters throughout the novel realize that life is not always as luxurious as it seems. Based on the East and West egg, both communities live very expensive lifestyles.
In The Great Gatsby, a classic American novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Valley of Ashes, East Egg, and West Egg are the three main regions surrounding New York City, a “racy, adventurous” city that epitomizes the American Dream (65). A cultural revolution, illustrated by the motif of geography, is occurring at the time setting of the book—the Jazz Age or the “Roaring” Twenties (69). During these tumultuous times, the capitalist economy roared on, but economic inequality between classes also grew. Klipspringer sings during Daisy’s visit to Gatsby’s mansion, “The rich get richer and the poor get—children” (95). Each of these main settings represents an element of the societal hierarchy that emerged in America during the Jazz Age, and establishes the understanding of the characters that inhabit that region and fit that class.
In the novel “Great Gatsby,” written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, many characters work towards their dreams in order to escape from their current lives and origin. The novel takes place in Long Island and New York during the 1920’s. The narrator of this novel is a man named Nick Carraway, who moves to a place called “West Egg” and becomes neighbors with a rich man named Jay Gatsby. Across the bay is another place called “East Egg,” where Nick’s cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom Buchanan live. During this time, wealth and class were a prominent part of a person’s identity. Without wealth or class, a person is restricted from certain privileges. Throughout the novel, Myrtle Wilson, and Jay Gatsby both are trying to reach their goals, but are faced with obstacles and barriers due to their lack of wealth and social status.
In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrates a variety of themes such as social class, wealth, greed, betrayal, and the American Dream. Among these, Fitzgerald develops the irony of wealth and social stature, while providing a quick glimpse of American life in the 1920s with the joy and sadness within each societal structure. Fitzgerald organizes his characters into distinct social groups showing how each group has its own set of problems to contend with, leaving a powerful reminder of how wealth cannot be the sole cause of happiness. By creating distinct social classes, old money, new money, and no money, and representing them through the establishment of different living societies such as East Egg, West Egg, and the Valley of Ashes, Fitzgerald is able to demonstrate the message of elite
The Great Gatsby was one of the wealthiest people at the point in time the movie was shot. The Great Gatsby was one of the richest men during the time of the movie, since he was making a lot of money on the job he was taking care of. Old money is the people that have worked for all their money and are very good at social skills. New money is people that are looked as if they don’t have near as much education as compared to people that are referenced to as “New Money”. The Great Gatsby was completely dealt around money and that was the main thing all of the actors was worried about during the movie.
Such is exemplified by Jay Gatsby, Myrtle Wilson and Tom Buchanan. Their ambitions distinctly represent the class in which Fitzgerald is strongly associated. Jay Gatsby is a wealthy young man living in a Gothic mansion in West Egg, where the New Money lives. He is famous for the lavish parties he throws every Saturday night and represents the new rich that the old rich distaste. The new rich are described as vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social grace and taste.
Money from birth and money earned create a large gap between those with one over the other. Throughout The Great Gatsby, the comparison of old money to new money contributes to the conflicts and aspirations in the novel, enhanced by the author: F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story gives examples of each, and proves the significant difference between the two, creating indirect separation of the characters representing each side of wealth. Along with this, Fitzgerald provides the ideas that new money is scorned by old money people, while old money people expend their wealth without a care in the world. The difference between old and new money in The Great Gatsby creates a divide between the characters and their goals, proving that the economic
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a novel that has a large focus on the ideas of the American Dream and social class in the 1920s. In the novel, the people of West Egg and East Egg are people of the upper who have earned money either through inheritance or working hard and have had many opportunities to make their American Dream a reality. The people of the Valley of Ashes are people of lower class who have little to no money and have to work all their lives to make ends meet. Even though both social classes strive for the same thing, The American Dream, neither of them will ever truly achieve it. Fitzgerald uses a vast contrast in the settings of East Egg, West Egg, and The Valley of Ashes to display the reoccurring theme of a pre-set social class and to expose the false reality that the American Dream presents upon society.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a jazz age novel demonstrating the corruption of humanity at the hands of material greed. Fitzgerald’s American classic is set on the opulent shores of Long Island Sound, where materialistic mansions pump out tainted souls like the not-so-distant factories spewing pollution into the city’s rivers. Whether new money or old money, Fitzgerald demonstrates that one is never free from the corruption that it brings. Jay Gatsby, a self-made man living on West Egg, lives his life in tireless pursuit of his dreams so that his material fulfillment will expunge years of poverty that his parents brought upon him. Gatsby lives the younger years
Henry David Thoreau once said, “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it”. For the avaricious, egocentric, and destructive characters of The Great Gatsby, their entire lives have been surrendered to the pursuit of wealth. Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald continues to be one of the most influential and widely recognized novels in American literature. It has served as a representation of the downfall of American society in the 1920’s for almost a century and continues to be criticized and analyzed for its portrayal of the upper class. Fitzgerald accurately embodies the American Dream of the time period and gives the readers a deeper understanding of some of the most problematic issues caused by class, politics, and wealth. Using unscrupulous characters, he depicts the road to self-destruction by way of materialistic and corrupt behavior. Although, on this path of inevitable demise, these characters not only manage to ruin their own lives, but destroy the
The desire for high status in the 1920’s has a volatile impact on humanity. The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of a few American literature novels to draw distinct lines between socio-economic classes. The novel accurately depicts the people of this time period and displays their troubling actions. The high society class lives life with a disregard of the law and exhibits their ignorance. The people in the Valley of Ashes, or the lower class of humanity, are driven to despair. Meanwhile the middle class is portrayed as fair-minded with more fundamental decencies. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby presents the opulence of the higher class, the anguish of the lower class… and somewhere in the middle lies the truth.
In the novel “The Great Gatsby”, F. Scott Fitzgerald, an American author, shows the idea that the newly developing class rivalry between “old” and “new” money, in West Egg versus East Egg, in the struggle between Gatsby and Tom over Daisy. He develops this claim by first introducing the “valley of ashes” as a picture of absolute desolation and poverty. The valley of ashes symbolizes the moral decay hidden by the embellishment of the Eggs, which suggests that underneath all of the embellishments there is still the ugliness of the valley. Next he uses a simile to describe all the people who (rich people mostly) came to his parties and what it was kind of like, “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and