Greed In The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath

The Modernist movement took place in a time of happiness, a time of sadness, a time of objects, a time of saving, a time of prosperity, a time of poverty and in a time of greed. Two novels, written by Steinbeck and Fitzgerald, portray this underlying greed and envy better than most novels of that period. These novels, The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath, show that despite the difference between the 1920s and the 1930s, greed remained a part of human life, whether superficially or necessarily, and that many people used their greed to damage themselves and others.

In both of these novels, greed as a whole is negative, corrosive, abrasive, destructive, and apocalyptic. As an example, in Gatsby the namesake, Gatsby’s, desire for Daisy forces him to become a jester to the rich through many parties, who inevitably fabricate stories about him, destroying his credibility, in order to impress Daisy. And later, after Daisy and Gatsby meet one another again, attempts to force Daisy to leave her husband, only for death to strike three times in retaliation of his lustful greed. Fitzgerald portrayed this well with a green light: “Now it was again a green light on a dock. His number of enchanted objects decreased by one.” (The University of Adelaide, 2011). The aforementioned significance of the light is that the light portrays his greed and lust for Daisy and her love. The object of his greed shifts from the green light to Daisy, his other “enchanted object.” This phenomenon also occurs with Tom, who, in his greed for more life than he has already, carries out open relationships and alienates Daisy. In fact, almost every character in Gatsby portrays a form of greed, such as dishonesty in Jordan’s case so that she can possess mo...

... middle of paper ...

...eotypically, and in the up-and-rising middle class. The greed portrayed by these characters has no explanation, at least that Fitzgerald offers, and thus should not exist; proving that these characters are simply greedy and deserve all that comes to them. And thus these two authors differ in the reasons why the greed occurs and, effectively, the difference in the short, 1-day gap from October 24 into October 25, 1929.

And so greed exists in the modern periods, saturating its two of its most famous novels and a theme of two of its most famous authors, portraying as all evil as caused by greed, illustrating the true cynicism of the era.

Works Cited

Stenbeck, J. (2006). Grapes of wrath, the. New York, New York: Penguin Books.

Fitzgerald, F.S. (2011). Great Gatsby, the. Retrieved Apr 14, 2011 from http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/f/fitzgerald/f_scott/gatsby/