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F. Scott Fitzgerald uses The Great Gatsby in order to display the wretchedness of upper-class society in the United States. The time period, the 1920s, was an age of new opulence and wealth for many Americans. As there is an abundance of wealth today, there are many parallels between the behavior of the wealthy in the novel and the behavior of today’s rich. Fitzgerald displays the moral emptiness and lack of personal ethics and responsibility that is evident today throughout the book. He also examines the interactions between social classes and the supposed noblesse oblige of the upper class. The idea of the American dream and the prevalence of materialism are also scrutinized. All of these social issues spoken about in The Great Gatsby are relevant in modern society. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses this novel as an indictment of a corrupt American culture that is still present today. First of all, Fitzgerald points out the flawed morals and lack of individual ethics and responsibility in the time period. The character who best exemplifies the decay of morality and rise of personal irresponsibility is Tom Buchanan. He is not faithful to his wife, Daisy, and carries on an extramarital affair with another woman. In general, many characters in the novel, such as Myrtle’s sister Catherine, see no issue with Tom’s infidelity. The respect for the bonds of marriage is not present. While that is heinous enough, Tom even shows that he is not even slightly guilty about his actions. This exposes his sub-par ethics. Tom has no true sense of right and wrong. His lack of ethical ability is so dramatic that Nick eventually remarks that he views Tom as a child. He deliberately shows his mistress off to Nick, and shows no remorse about his actions. He ... ... middle of paper ... ... evident today, the vain pursuit of things in order to bring happiness is common. In addition, Fitzgerald shows that even the most basic part of American society, the American dream, has been corrupted. All of these elements blend together to form a corrupt and vile society that is a reflection of today's. Works Cited Bloom, Harold. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. New York: Infobase, 2010. Print. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print Goldberg, Carey. "Materialism is Bad for You, Studies Say." The New York Times. 8 Feb. 2006: 1. Web. Morin, Rich. "Rising Share of Americans See Conflict Between Rich and Poor." Pew Research Social & Demographic Trends. 11 Jan. 2012: 1-2. Web. Watson, Rita. "Low Infidelity, Shock Statistics, and the Forgiveness Factor." Psychology Today. 27 Sept. 2011. 1. Web.
In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Daisy Miller by Henry James, most of the characters are under illusions during the majority of the plot. The plots are carried out with the characters living under these illusions, which are mainly overcome by the ends of the stories. The disillusionment of most of the characters completely diminishes the foundation in which the plots were built upon, leading to the downfall of some of the main characters and the altering of the other characters.
Crossing the porch where we had dined that June night three months before, I came to a small rectangle of light which I guessed was the pantry window. The blind was drawn, but I found a rift at the sill.
In the novel, “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author establishes materialism and wealth as a corruption to the American dream. The American dream embodies the idea of self-sufficient, honest and intelligent individual with a happy successful life. It is also the idea of the pursuit of happiness but Daisy Buchanan a wealthy aristocrat goes after the empty pursuit of pleasure, portraying her character as a disillusionment of the American dream and how much it lost its good values. The wealthy are blinded by all their money, such as the Buchanan’s who forget the real idea of the American dream leading them to having no morals or values. The money gives them the ability to walk all over others, careless of whom they hurt and affect. Daisy Buchanan represents the corruption of the American dream; her careless actions resulted in destroying the ones around her. Although Daisy appears to be full of light and kindness, she is truly self-centered. Fitzgerald develops his social commentary on the idea of wealth corrupting morality and the American dream through the lack of values that Daisy embodies.
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.
During Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, it is apparent to be an absurd time for the wealthy. The shallowness of money, riches, and a place in a higher social class were probably the most important components in most lives at that period of time. This is expressed clearly by Fitzgerald, especially through his characters, which include Myrtle Wilson, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, and of course, Jay Gatsby. This novel was obviously written to criticize and condemn the ethics of the rich.
They say that art imitates life…or life imitates art. Either one is somewhat hard to believe. A few brushes of a paintbrush on a canvas, a mirror image on the film of a camera, or even a special combination of the 26 letters of the alphabet onto a page—imitating life? Of course, people can paint life, or take pictures of life, and even write about life. It’s a bit more obvious that the concept of life imitating art is a bit harder to believe. But you can learn from art—especially from the literary art. Books are teachers that you can become. When making art, you put a bit of yourself into it—it becomes a bit of you, and you become a bit of it. You can read about characters, fictional or otherwise, and want to be them. You place yourself in their shoes and learn from their mistakes and you inevitably become them for a little bit. When art imitates life, life in turn imitates art. Art imitating life is so common; we hardly ever point it out. We notice a few lives quite clearly through a self-portrait, a song, or even a book. Sometimes it isn’t as intentional as the artist meant it to be. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses events from his life so thoroughly in his novel, The Great Gatsby, leading us to believe he wrote the novel as a sort of autobiography emphasizing his interesting life and his relationship with his wife.
Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you! Thomas Parke D'Invilliers Jay Gatsby went through most of his life striving for a new beginning, a chance to start over and succeed. He forced that aspect of life, into his own, by changing his identity. He was James Gatz a man who's unknown soul was left to linger in the past. Now he is Jay Gatsby.
There are times when reality falls short of expectations, and when individuals fail to live up to their ideals. This struggle can come in the form of one specific event, or an overall life philosophy. The quest to attain what we really want can be an all encompassing one, requiring all of our devotion and effort. It is especially painful to see others possess what we cannot have. For the characters in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby these problems are all too real. Gatsby works for a lifetime to gain back what he feels is rightfully his, while all the while facing the crushing realization that he may be too late. Fitzgerald uses this futile search to introduce the idea that the idealized America Gatsby fought for has been corrupted over time. Descriptions of a land of picket fences and middle class freedom is exchanged for one based on greed and lies, where characters with stop at nothing to attain what they desire. Fitzgerald provides a window into the American Dream, and shows that it has become one based on immorality and deception.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Throughout time and space, the world has seen many writers that have altered life as we know it. The world continues to change as an ever-shifting ball of culture and intellect. Man's history has given us writers like Shakespeare, who is still misunderstood to this day, and Homer, a man that has many Americans thinking of a cartoon character with the lack of intelligence.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald discusses many themes of the 1920s, with a specific focus on the rich and idle class, the “old money,” those whose wealth allows them to be careless and destructive without consequences. In the novel, this group of people is characterized by Tom and Daisy- a couple who moves leisurely through life, destroying relationships and lives without knowing or caring. Tom’s privileged upbringing has made the concepts of morality and responsibility completely foreign to him, and he is the driving force in this mutually corrupt relationship: his disregard for everything except his own personal pleasure shapes the interactions between him and Daisy. Daisy on the other hand is a blank slate, a mirror of her surroundings, an empty-headed, whimsical girl who just wants to have fun. The carelessness afforded to her by Tom’s money and influence, and, by extension, Tom’s own habits of carelessness, molds Daisy into a sad shell of a person. Daisy is not inherently corrupt and destructive, as Tom is, but it makes no difference as Tom has already passed the worst of his characteristics onto her. Indeed, it is Daisy, not Tom, who performs the ultimate sin at the end of the novel, and it is Daisy, not Tom, who shirks away from taking responsibility for this terrible deed and instead allows innocent lives to be destroyed for her actions. Daisy and Tom are the perfect couple. Neither cares the slightest bit about the other and so both live absurd, dreary lives, thinking they have found happiness, while instead both have become disinterested with the ease of living they enjoy. This disinterest makes Tom and Daisy the victims of the wealth and influence that are so commonly seen as desira...
The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. “In the years immediately after the completion of The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald was unable to provide his art with any such endorsement” (Collins). Fitzgerald was unable to get his book published because of insufficient funds. According to Harris, “F Scott Fitzgerald wrote his greatest novel in France in 1924, having exiled himself in order to get some work done” (Harris). The best novel Fitzgerald has written he wrote when he was in France. According to Kenneth, “The hard work was the eleven stories and articles Fitzgerald wrote in six months to get himself out of debt after the failure of The Vegetable.”(Kenneth). F. Scott Fitzgerald was a very hardworking author when his book The Vegetable became a failure. It took him eleven stories and articles written in six months to get him out of debt.
Within the craftsmanship of The Great Gatsby one may find many separate themes. McAdams sees these themes to be “moral growth, Gatsby’s life of illusion, [and] the withering of the American Dream,” (653). It is within the characters of The Great Gatsby that this class division is seen, as it is “an expression of Fitzgerald’s doubts about America’s moral direction” (McAdams 654). The Great Gatsby is more about walls than overcoming
Tom Buchanan, one of Nick’s peers from Yale University, is a man with an enormous sum of money but does not have any decency with the way he lives his life. All that matters to him is that he is wealthy and the fact that he can control and bully almost everyone around him, including his wife Daisy Buchanan. Nick strongly disapproves with how Daisy and Tom are in a loveless marriage and how they cheat on each other. Tom becomes angry at how Daisy is having an affair Jay Gatsby, yet he is doing the same thing with Myrtle Wilson. Nick sees that this is a very hypocritical thing for Tom to do.
Although many people believe the 1920’s was an era of prosperity, F. Scott Fitzgerald believed that this was a time of decline of moral and social values. This belief is shown in The Great Gatsby with its idea of a desolate pursuit of pleasure and greed. Because the setting takes place in the roaring twenties, many Americans had the rampant desire for money and pleasure. With the sharp rise in the stock market, it seemed that any American could get rich with little effort. According to Ben Nicholson, “The corruption of the American soul is consumerism”. In other words, the American dream and its values can be corrupted by the concept of wealth and power.
All of the characters are symbolic of different classes in American society, from the richest to the poorest. Through the characters, Fitzgerald characterizes all the hopes and dreams of people living during the Jazz Age. As is typical of humans, none of the characters are satisfied with what they have. Each character wants more than what they are getting out of life. Tom and Daisy Buchanan represent "old money"; they seem to have it all: wealth, place in high society, a family, and all the advantages that come with being wealthy. On the surface they appear to be what the American Dream is all about; however, they are both dissatisfied with their lives, themselves, and each other. They are a classic example of the Dream's corruption because in spite of all they have, they are still seeking the true luxuries that each person wants from life: love, peace, and true happiness. Both Tom and Daisy are indifferent to the suffering hopes and dreams of all those around them. "They were careless people....they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money...and let other people clean up their mess" (Fitzgerald 188). A clear example of their careless...