Moth And Morality In Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

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To think of a day in which one will no longer serve one’s neighbor and aid those who are in need seems too absurd. No reasonable human being under our kind and forgiving nature would be able to do this without any sort of guilt or disgust in themselves. But these thoughts came close to becoming a full blown reality back in the 1920’s especially following the prosperity of The Great War. People looked for their own wealth and prosperity to keep up with the society of the time. In doing so, the entire human race’s morality came into question. No longer were there days of generosity and plain kindness. Everything was done to benefit one’s agenda and only theirs. A person modified their own identity to reach the height of prosperity that others …show more content…

Things seemed to be great for America following World War I. While the United States seemed to be showing great wealth on the exterior, the interior and inner soul of America seemed to be dying off. Many of the worst aspects of the Gilded Age seemed to be rearing its ugly head once again (Levitt 260). The Great Gatsby did great at expressing these qualities. Of the many intentions of the novel, Fitzgerald portrayed how Victorian Moral Values began to dissolve throughout America’s society. People traded these values in turn for upward mobility and wealth. There were not many figures at the time that helped present and influence morality to the grand scheme of people (The Great Gatsby). Because of this, the decay of morality seemed to spread like wildfire and affected a numerous amount of …show more content…

Gatsby came to rise due to criminal capitalism and gangster economics (Levitt 260). Tom Buchanan left Chicago because of a great scandal involving infidelity and continued to do so in New York. Jordan Baker is a constant cheater and liar and seems to have a hard time restraining those qualities. Daisy was the culprit of a hit and run and never fessed up to the crime and in the process, she became the cause for the death of Gatsby. The root of all this immorality was caused by money and materialism. Nick Caraway brings attention to the immorality. “When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart” (Fitzgerald 2). Nick tells of his experiences in New York and through these lines explains how horrendous the morality at the time seemed to be. Nobody seemed to care about one another unless it came with a benefit. One was rarely able to see the true greatness and kindness of the human heart and it became scarce. Not even mother’s showed their greatness in their behavior through one’s child. Daisy seems to lack any attention or care for her child in the novel. The novel passes this sort of neglection for a child as a norm in the society. She rarely brings up her child and when she does she moves on quickly.

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