Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Social class in the great gatsby
Representation of class in the great gatsby
Female characters great gatsby
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Throughout The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald conveys how there are many sides to social class and the explosion of the workers just how myrtle is an example of exposure of the working class and the valley of ashes the plight of the poor. This shows the real America and how there's no “dream”. Through the description of the valley of ashes which represent the social class Fitzgerald conveys the plight of the poor. The valley of ashes symbolizes social decay and the plight of the poor. The place is more of a gloomy and sad place pictured with no color, all black and white there is little to no hope in the valley of ashes. “This is the 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 men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air”. (23) Just like the quote says ashes grow like wheat into ridges, all of the decay that happens goes and just piles up there.The quote also states how everything there is made out of ashes so that meaning there's really nothing left there there's no joy no good. …show more content…
There are many ignorant people who try to be something they're not or try to act of a higher class like Myrtle,” I told that boy about the ice." Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders.
"These people! You have to keep after them all the time" (69). This shows that she thinks that acting how she is, is making her sound smart and better than everyone else. She has a rude attitude towards the people making them sound like she has to take care of them. When in actuality she sounds more like she is rude and a cheating woman. Myrtle falls into the category of the valley of ashes because she falls lower in class she's not rich she’s the wife of
Tom. Myrtle had been slapped for saying daisy her husband got tired of her and slapped her to shut her up. This shows her life and how she is an example of the lower class and the treatment they have. Throughout the quote myrtle says daisy to try and get out her anger and by that she also reminded tom he had been cheating on her“Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing, in impassioned voices, whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy's name."Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!" shouted Mrs. Wilson. "I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai –– "Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand”. (125-127). This is plight of the poor how all she really has is Tom and gets mad tries to fight for him even though he's not a good husband. This is showing the faint and little despair that is in Wilsons eyes this is his economic standing point where he can’t really climb the social ladder that is created he can't get to where Gatsby is. “Wilson's glazed eyes turned out to the ashheaps, where small grey clouds took on fantastic shape and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind.” (101) Wilson sees all his dreams and aspirations gone and disappeared. This is when myrtle gets run over and this part shows how everyone ends up no matter what the class she ended up dying. “Myrtle wilson's body wrapped in a blanket, and then in another blanket, as though she suffered from a chill to us, was bending over over it...next to him.
In this quote, the Valley of Ashes is portrayed as a “desolate area of land” where the glory of West Egg and New York are separated by a valley characterized as “grotesque,” dim, and “crumbling.” Fitzgerald includes this setting to describe important characters, such as Myrtle Wilson, who have an extreme influence on others because they are considered impoverished and trashy with no class. The Valley of Ashes symbolizes despair and poor lifestyles, which is why Myrtle is able to be used by Tom, who, in disdain, no longer shows feelings for his wife. The road is also personified to represent those who reside in the West Egg, who are snobby and want nothing to do with the poor.
A more thorough investigation of The Great Gatsby is necessary to uncover a well-disguised theme by Fitzgerald in this work. Upon a simple read through one would probably not notice the great similarities of Jay Gatsby and Myrtle Wilson, but the two characters seemed to have the same agenda for their lives. While Gatsby took the route of acquiring money at all costs to join the upper class of society and to be acceptable in the eyes of a woman, Myrtle chose to make her way up in society at the cost of her marriage by attaching herself to money. The underlying question is who had the most success.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, Gatsby’s obsessive pursuit of goals suggest that Fitzgerald believe that obsessiveness and constant desires often lead to a wrong psychological impact, destructive of one’s traditions, morals, and would have an unplanned end of the lesson or life.
For most people, a certain colour may represent something meaningful to them. While in the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, many of the colours used in the novel are meant to represent something. The novel’s setting is in East and West Egg, two places in New York. Our narrator, Nick Carraway, lives in the West Egg. Along with living in West Egg is a friend of Nick’s, Jay Gatsby; a character that is in love with Daisy Buchanan. Unfortunately, Daisy is married to Tom. As the plot unravels, the reader notices the connection between certain colours and their importance to the novel. The use of colours within The Great Gatsby symbolizes actual themes, as grey symbolizes corruption, blue symbolizes reality, and green symbolizes jealousy and envy.
Through these quotes, Fitzgerald believes the American dream is unattainable in the Great Gatsby because some people in the novel had advantages unlike others. A major instance of said inequality would be applied to the citizens who are living in the Valley of Ashes; representing the forgotten poor underclass with lost hopes and dreams who have failed to live up to the American dream or even got a chance to start. Therefore, the Valley of Ashes is a blatant symbol of just how “dead” Fitzgerald really believes the American dream to be, and how he wants the readers to interpret it. Fitzgerald wrote “.ashes take the form of..men who move dimly and are already crumbling through powdery air..immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades.”. Tell’em
The Great Gatsby “The Great Gatsby”, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, depicts the vast social difference between the old aristocrats, the new self-made rich and the poor. He vividly interprets the social stratification during the roaring twenties as each group has their own problems to deal with. Old Money, who have fortunes dating from the 19th century, have built up powerful and influential social connections, and tend to hide their wealth and superiority behind a veneer of civility. The New Money made their fortunes in the 1920s boom and therefore have no social connections and tend to overcompensate for this lack with lavish displays of wealth. As usual, the No Money gets overlooked by the struggle at the top, leaving them forgotten or ignored.
By exploring the physical site of the valley, followed by the inhabitants of the valley – George and Myrtle, George representing the working class and Myrtle the exception, extending this to the references of the valley to Gatsby’s humble origins, the Valley of the Ashes represents the low social mobility and the failure of the American Dream.
Benjamin Franklin once said “Money has never made man happy, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness." This is arguably one of the most cliché quotes of all time. If money cannot provide happiness, then what exactly can it do? The characters of Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan open a door to a world in which money was the sole motivation for their success and the only reason for their power. When the reader uses a Marxist critical lens during chapter four of F. Scott 's Fitzgerald 's The Great Gatsby, the social hierarchy reveals how Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan utilize the importance of money and social power to manipulate others in their lives.
Lack of justice present in society, leading the powerful to commits acts of injustice against those without power. Society does not treat everyone fairly in The Great Gatsby, social injustice is evident in The Great Gatsby when Nick quotes, “About half way between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. 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 men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.” (Fitzgerald 26). Society has different standards and living conditions for those of other classes, unlike the old or new wealth the middle and poor class are shown to be suffering and work much harder than those of the other class but earn less of the pie, Fitzgerald view of the corrupt society present in the 1920’s is shown through the social inequalities that separate poor and rich defines the economic injustice present, the poor individuals are used by the rich for their own personal gain().
On one level The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald comments on the careless gaiety and moral decadence of the period in which it was set. It contains innumerable references to the contemporary scene. The wild extravagance of Gatsby's parties, the shallowness and aimlessness of the guests and the hint of Gatsby's involvement in crime all identify the period and the American setting. But as a piece of social commentary The Great Gatsby also describes the failure of the American dream, from the point of view that American political ideals conflict with the actual social conditions that exist. For whereas American democracy is based on the idea of equality among people, the truth is that social discrimination still exists and the divisions among the classes cannot be overcome. Myrtle's attempt to break into the group to which the Buchanans belong is doomed to fail. Taking advantage of her vivacity, her lively nature, she seeks to escape from her own class. She enters into an affair with Tom and takes on his way of living. But she only becomes vulgar and corrupt like the rich. She scorns people from her own class and loses all sense of morality. And for all her social ambition, Myrtle never succeeds in her attempt to find a place for herself in Tom's class. When it comes to a crisis, the rich stand together against all outsiders.
Criticism of Capitalism in The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald creates an artificial world where money is the object of everyone's desire. The characters, the setting, and the plot are very deeply submerged in a Capitalism that ends up destroying many of them. Fitzgerald's criticism of Capitalism can be seen as a move to subtly promote Socialism, an ideology in which value is placed on the inherent value of an object rather than its market value. In a late collection of notes, Fitzgerald himself proclaims that he is "essentially Marxist. " Marxism is a specific branch of Socialist theory.
Contrasting significantly to the Buchanan’s, Gatsby and Nick, the Wilsons live on the outskirts of New York in what they would call the Valley of Ashes. While describing the slum, Fitzgerald writes “One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night restaurant, approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—Repairs. GEORGE B. WILSON. Cars bought and sold.—and I followed Tom inside.” (Fitzgerald 25) Myrtle and George’s less than charitable advantage as compared to Gatsby and Tom. As shown in the Valley of Ashes, the people that live there, including the Wilsons, are limited to three functioning stores within their surroundings. This scarce availability shows how the poor were forced to succumb to the monopolies of “big business”. They used their garage as their sole source of income, depriving them of financial security. Compared to Gatsby and Tom, George Wilson was not involved with business dealings outside of his garage. As a result, the stagnant success of the Wilson’s garage leads them trapped in a “have not” society. Here, Fitzgerald satirizes social class structure, pointing out how Americans use economic standing as the deciding factor in social standing. One critic writes “Fitzgerald calls it the "indiscernible barbed wire between [the wealthy and the less fortunate]" (155)—that has to do with intangibles such as taste
...ent efforts, or men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air” (23). Here, The Valley of Ashes is regarded as complete destitution and hopelessness. The people known as the lower class do not wish to live in the valley of ashes. This is why people, like Myrtle try to do anything to get away from it but instead it becomes unachievable for them. When Myrtle tried to escape from the ashes by trying to be with a rich man like Tom, she dies. This embellishes how The American dream is unattainable. When Tom goes and sees George, you can see how the higher classes look down on the lower classes because of their different social positions. The higher-class people such as, Tom, Daisy, and Jordan represent the unstructured bodies of ashes within the valley. They are inconsiderate and conceited people arising from the dead ashes, changing the American Dream.
In brief, the world of The Great Gatsby can seem as sordid, loveless, commercial, and dead as the ash heaps presided over by the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg. Indeed, this atmosphere is so essential that one of the alternate titles Fitzgerald considered was Among the Ash-Heaps and Millionaires. Fitzgerald using the valley of ashes, illustrates an environment where love has lost its place, which destroys hope for a family; the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg, clearly intended to represent those of God, emphasizes that this lack of love and filial piety in a sin against themselves as well as society and God.
In the beginning of chapter 2 the Valley of Ashes was introduced, the place where the poor people lived. Ashes grow like wheat into ridges, and the air is powdery, there are ashes everywhere. They make it seem as if everything is covered by ash, it’s a sad place, where no one wants to be. There is a small river that has a drawbridge for whenever something has to ge through. Everything there represents hopelessness and sadness, the only color that you are bound to see there is grey.