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Social class and status in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
Social class and status in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
Social class and status in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
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The novel’s use of contrast between East Egg, West Egg, and the Valley of Ashes begins to explore the differences between social classes. East Egg houses the most wealthy and aristocratic members of the nearby area. It contains many “white palaces” (Fitzgerald 10) that are quite “fashionable” (Fitzgerald 10). This description paints an image of purity and untouched standards of wealth that are translated into the book’s time period. Due to the pristineness of the village, the homes “[glitter] along the water,” (10) further supporting the idyllic qualities East Egg appears to have. West Egg, on the contrary, is home to people of near equal affluence, but of less social establishment. It is described by the narrator as “less fashionable,” (Fitzgerald
Chapter 1: Chapter one introduces the reader to the narrator Nick Halloway and most of the other other characters of the story. Including his cousin daisy, her husband tom and their friend jordan - the golfer. Nick comes from a wealthy family; however, doesn’t believe in inheriting their wealth. Instead he wishes to earn his own wealth by selling bonds in the stock market. Chapter one also talks about the separation of the rich. Where the east egg represents the inherently rich whereas west egg represents the newly rich. The people in the east also seem to lack social connections and aristocratic pedigree. Whereas the people in west egg possess all those qualities usually lacked by people in the east.With nick living
“This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys”(Fitzgerald 2). Tom and Nick a driving through a place between West Egg and New York, which is an industrial zone where the lower class lives. Here alone we can see how the poor class lives their daily lives in filth, but the rich live in shiny clean houses.
At first read, John Updike's 'A & P' contrasts old and new; the old manager in his settled life conflicting with the new age of girls wearing bathing suits in buildings. All the while, the narrator stuck in the middle, finally deciding to join the side of new, or youth. Instead of old vs. new, an observation closer to the heart of the story is conflict between the worlds of the rich and the middle class. ?A & P? is the setting for one man to decide in which way he will seek to follow his life, standing on his own two feet and treating everyone as equals, or bowing before the wealthy, and searching for his own riches above all else.
All of the inhabitants of East and West Egg use one another to get what they want, with little care as to how it will affect the people around them. Through the eyes of Nick Carraway, we see how the wealthy live: they live in a luxurious society surrounded by their own lies and deception. Looking in from the outside, their lives seem perfect; they have everything that money can buy, right? Wrong, the one thing that their money cannot buy them is happiness, and this is why each character deceives someone.
This hopeless place provides a stark contrast between the low-status people living here and the high-status people living in West Egg and East Egg. In the end, Myrtle’s death in her home in the Valley of Ashes further associates the place with pain, misfortune, and despair, a place where nothing ever good
The heart of the whole notion of wealth lies in the setting of the novel, the east and west eggs of New York City. The west egg was a clustering of the "Nouveau riche" or the newly acquired rich, and the east egg was where the people who inherited their riches resided. The eggs divided the people rich in two with the poor being limited to the middle, the "valley of ashes". Even the way the narrator, Nick Carraway, describes the two communities' gives off a feeling of superiority. Nick describes the east as " the less fashionable of the two, through this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them" (...
Fitzgerald uses setting to criticise society’s loss of morality and the growth of consumerism after the Great War. The rise of the stock market in the 1920s enabled business to prosper in America. However, although the owners of industry found themselves better off wages didn’t rise equally, causing the gap between the rich and poor to grow markedly. Parkinson argues that the settings “represent [these] alternative worlds of success and failure in a modern capitalist society”. The valley of ashes symbolises this failure and moral decay, acting as a foil to the affluent “world of success”, East Egg, and highlighting that the lower classes must suffer to support its existence. This setting is introduced in Chapter 2 and is described as where “ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens”. The personification of the environment creates the sense that these failures are rooted in the land, suggesting that poverty is an inescapable part of American society. This is emphasised through the use of tripling which creates a sense of endlessness. By describing the men who live there as “crumbling through the pow...
In the valley of ashes “The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic — their irises are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose” (Fitzgerald 23).This builboard is located int eh valley of ases which is between New York and east and west egg. The valley of ashes is where the lower class lives and Fitzgerald describes it as “a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; were ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and ready crumbling through the powdery air” (Fitzgerald 23). The valley of ashes also dymbolises all the moral decay going on in the novel such as: cheating, lying, abuse,and illigal activity.
It’s like Tom Outland’s death stirred up turmoil for the family. Everyone became at odds with each other. Before Tom died, Mrs. St. Peter had a grudge of jealousy towards him because of the bonding relationship he and her husband, Professor, St. Peter had formed. Rosamond and Kathleen have a grudge against each other because both girls were fond of Tom but Tom loved Rosamond. Tom left all his money and inventions to Rosamond and it was a large sum that provided her with the enablement to live comfortably. Kathleen feels like Rosamond flashes the money in her face and finds it preposterous. ““I can’t help it, father. I am envious. I don’t think I would be if she let me alone, but she comes here with her magnificence and takes the life out of all our poor little things. Everybody knows she’s rich, why does she have to keep rubbing it in”” (69)? The Outland holds bitterness and unresolved
Paragraph: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Lawrence Ferlinghetti uses imagery and diction to show how the rich and poor’s are divided by the color of the society from the relation to the environment people live in. When the garbage truck and the luxurious Mercedes stoped at a light, it describes, “A bright yellow garbage truck with two garbage men in red plastic blazers” (Ferlinghetti 3-4) and “The men in a hip three-piece linen suit with shoulder-length blond hair & sunglasses” (Ferlinghetti 10-11). This shows the huge difference to the environment in each peoples lives that people goes through between society. In The Great Gatsby it shows the difference in the community in the cities when it describes, “The ashes take the former of houses and chimneys
Victor and Elizabeth’s childhood reflects a part of the main meaning of the whole as a commentary on the power of wealth in society. Victor was born with a not silver but golden spoon in
The Valley of Ashes symbolizes absolute poverty and hopelessness. “This is a valley of ashes, a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.” The lower classes who inhibit this
The area that they live in itself indicates their social standing, as each reside from the opposite ends of the spectrum. East Egg, an island known for its “old money”- where people have been wealthy for generations, is where everyone wants to be in, as Daisy even says she’d be a “God damned fool to live anywhere else” (10). Daisy has always been wealthy, and marries Tom Buchanan in hopes of staying on top of the social ladder. Contrarily, the Valley of Ashes is a place described as “where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke” (23). The area is a wasteland described by dark tones, representing poverty and corruption. People desperately desire money and power which is why Myrtle has an affair with Tom, the same reason as to why Daisy marries him, his class. The two women come from different social standings to show distinct viewpoints based on a person’s
... The East Egg represents the careless and inconsiderate old money and upper class that uses money to ease their minds from ever worrying about hurting others. Both East Egg and West Egg combined make up the upper class in the East which embodies the idea of moral hollowness, which is represented by the valley of ashes and the moral and social decay of America.
The focus of everyday life in the Victorian Age gives an idea of what the people, in that particular time, had to deal with. Men and women alike walked the streets of London to complete their daily tasks set before them, “Hundreds of thousands of men and women drawn from all classes and ranks of society pack the streets of London” (Engels 1591). This kind of picture of everyday life shows us a realistic picture of Victorian London; it was crowded with people from all social lives. Although the Victorian Age did mention social class, it did not focus on it like the Romantic Period did. The Romantic Period tended to focus on the struggles of the poor, how they interacted with the rich, and how love, imagination, or determination overcame social class, as in “The Mortal Immortal”. In the realistic view of the Victorian Age, the poor stayed poor most of the time and did not socialize with the rich outsid...