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Immorality and corruption in gatsby
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Within the real world individuals constantly ask: Does money actually equal happiness? Money doesn’t equal happiness, money equals superiority or privilege and happiness equals desire. Similarly, in Scott Fitzgerald's’ The Great Gatsby, Tom, Daisy and Gatsby portray money equals superiority and happiness equal desire by the actions they chose to make as well as their deep sentiments. Primarily, Gatsby, the West Egg millionaire uses the newly derived money to get the girl he wants so he can fulfill his dream of being eternally in love with her. Initially, Gatsby was a poor, his goal was to be of higher economic status so he could win over Daisy. Although when an individual becomes wealthy he/she grows superior: “He wanted nothing… five …show more content…
years ago”( 109). Gatsby is now forcing his wish for Daisy to declare to Tom, “she does not love him”. Without knowing her true feelings about Tom, he pushes her to say such a comment which she does not want to do after being with Tom for so long. Gatsby depicts superiority over Daisy for attempting to take over her own feelings and mind for the benefit of himself. Now since he is wealthy, Gatsby believes he could dominate Daisy since she is below her economically since he has gained superiority. Additionally, Gatsby shows his desire to love Daisy through his feelings. or Gatsby to be happy he believes he needs Daisy back like how their relationship was before Tom: “ I’m going to … what that thing was…”(110). Gatsby desire is to fix how their love was before by rejuvenating lost time. He demonstrates he willing to go back and find what made him fall in love with her in the first place and have a do over. For Jay Gatsby to be happy, he believes his love for Daisy will fill the place in his heart to bring him happiness. Secondarily, Daisy Buchanan, wife of Tom and ex-girlfriend of Gatsby shows she has and wants more privilege/money which can be found in a man like Tom. Daisy, like Gatsby, also has the desire to love Gatsby since her husband gives her no affection. Even though Daisy is a woman of privilege she goes about cheating looking for a man who has money: “Through this twilight universe...still at Oxford” (151). Even though Gatsby disappeared Daisy begins to search for money as a sense of security and high position. She wanted her life shaped of money, and her life did once she met Tom Buchanan. Because she found money, she could be criticized since she chose paper money over the man she loved who was poor at the time. By Daisy’s action, money is depicted to be superior considering its ability to override love. Similarly, for Daisy to happy she believes she needs Gatsby love again. Daisy demonstrates her love by openly cheating with Gatsby: “Daisy and Gatsby... an act of God”(105). Even though Daisy is married she isn’t getting the love and attention she wants from Tom, so she wants love from Gatsby. At his party, they dance in the presence of Tom Buchanan. Her will to go about cheating shows she desperately needs love, and since Gatsby returned into her life they are happy and nearly inseparable. Her desire for love indicates she is unhappy with her relationship with Tom and wants love from Gatsby. Lastly, Tom Buchanan shows money is superior through cowardice while also demonstrating his desire for attention.
As a man of high privilege, Tom is considerably able to get away with a lot: “ I couldn’t forgive… they had made…” (179). Rich people often believe and are accustomed to having people clean up their mess. Both Tom and Daisy created a domino affect of issues which affected Gatsby, and both Myrtle and George Wilson. Because Tom has money, he has a the capability or privilege to get away with a lot opposed to people of lower socio-economic status. By moving West, he left others to deal with a the effect of his actions demonstrating, money gives him the approach as being superior and above the people below him. Also, due to the fact Tom and Daisy do not have the best relationship: “That’s what I… ‘Hulking’, insisted Daisy”(12) he is neither getting love or attention from Daisy. Because their relationship isn’t well he looks for affection elsewhere by adopting a mistress, Myrtle Wilson. He and Myrtle have secret relations though everyone seems to know about their secret: “Tom’s got some… Don’t you think?” (15). Much like Daisy, Tom is unhappy with his relationship with Daisy so he cheats on her with Myrtle. He is a coward for thinking no one would suspect they were together, but there is no hiding Tom and Myrtle’s relationship. Toms cheats on her for his own benefit so he can be happy and get affection from a woman who is of different social class and has a contrasting appearance as
Daisy. Significantly, Scott Fitzgerald does not believe money is equivalent because the characters aren’t happy because of money they are/become happy because they want the person or idea they desire the most. By getting what they desire, happiness comes their way. Though Fitzgerald demonstrates money only brings forth privilege based on the intentions brought about by the characters. Generally, wealth doesn’t bring happiness because money can’t buy everything.
As we read "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scot Fitzgerald we can undoubtedly noticed the criticisms he has made towards wealth and the American dream. He has made us wonder and speculate whether or not the pursuit of wealth is entirely a noble aspect of life and that we should consider our values before we submerses our self in the waters of greed. As strange as it may seem, Fitzgerald criticizes elements of his own life to expose money's destructive influence on the individual as well as the corruption it causes upon the minds of men.
In the novel “The Great Gatsby” the main character named Jay Gatsby a poor kid once, who change his genuine name to wind up another man “James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career” (Fitzgerald 104), Gatsby battled all his life to accomplish one objective, to finally be together with the love of his live Daisy Buchanan in his adventure he took troublesome decisions that impact his life and future with Daisy.
Lathbury, Roger. “Money, Love and Aspiration in The Great Gatsby.” Major Literary Characters. Ed. Harold Bloom. Broomall: Chelsea House, 2004. 69-82. Print.
A cliché that everyone has heard before is ‘money can’t buy happiness”. This cliché is presented in the book The Great Gatsby even though it’s not a theme of the book it is still important. In this paper, we look at how the following theme fits the book: People’s desire for money and power can corrupt their true happiness. We will look at how the main characters fit the theme and other symbols in the book.
In “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, social classes are tremendously influential to morality. The rich are divided up into groups that live in opposite “eggs” of Long Island, New York City. The West Egg is described as being the land of “New Money” and the East Egg is characterized as being the land of “Old Money”. Right in between both of these “Egg’s” lies an infamous area of dismay and hardship called “The Valley of Ashes” where almost peasant appearing individuals reside. These working class individuals are portrayed throughout the book as being hardworking and morally belittled by the upper class as if those that aren’t rich aren’t worthy of even being in the presence of those that are.
One would think being wealthy would be an uncomplicated and satisfying life. In the book, The Great Gatsby, by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, proves that living the high-life is not all that blissful. Being wealthy can corrupt one’s life. An example of this is the main character in the book, Gatsby, who is one of the top wealthiest person in New York. Since he has done criminal acts in the pass to earn his money, he cannot win the love of his life, Daisy. One being wealthy can live a corrupt life because high-class people are not always happy, society views them as someone who is formal, which leads to one living a false life, and believing one’s whole life that the world revolves around oneself and that money can do anything they want it to do.
Three works Cited Materialism started to become a main theme of literature in the modernist era. During this time the economy was good causing jazz to be popular, bootlegging common, and an affair meaning nothing (Gevaert). This negative view of money and the gross materialism in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby serves to be a modern theme in the novel. Throughout the novel, the rich possess a sense of carelessness and believe that money yields happiness.
Despite having money the relationship between the two is unhealthy at best. Tom is having an affair with Myrtle Wilson, which Daisy is aware of, and Daisy is having an affair with Gatsby which Tom is aware of. The two are not fully happy with the life they have together so they result to affairs with other people, but the two refuse to leave each other due to their status in the town. By living a wealthy, upper hand lifestyle, you are not always safe and guaranteed a long happy life. Gatsby was the wealthiest man in town and yet he died at a very young age, he got himself into a situation that led him to be murdered. When Gatsby and Daisy were returning from town Daisy struck Myrtle with Gatsby’s car causing Myrtle’s death, the next day Tom informed George that Gatsby was the driver of the car that killed his wife. George immediately jumped to the conclusion that Gatsby was the man Myrtle was having an affair with which lead him to go to Gatsby’s house and shoot him dead in his pool, then killing himself. Sometimes throughout your life despite being wealthy or not wealthy you take actions and come in contact with people who will jeopardize your life. Some believe that people who are wealthy are considered to view their lives as better
Shortly after the beginning of the novel, Tom introduces Nick to his mistress, Myrtle. Tom and Myrtle spend time together in town to keep their relationship a secret, but Tom also distorts the truth of why he cannot end his marriage with Daisy “”It’s really his wife that’s keeping them apart. She’s a Catholic, and they don’t believe in divorce.” Daisy was not a Catholic, and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie” (Page 33, The Great Gatsby). This proves Tom’s dishonesty towards other’s about his own wife, Daisy. Furthermore, Tom is also dishonest directly to Daisy about his double life; Tom’s extramarital affair ultimately proves that he does not treat his spouse, Daisy, well. Tom does not respect his own wife as he constantly deceits her so he can be content “Tom is the sort of man who can exercise is potency only if he is with a certain kind of woman. Myrtle Wilson is such a woman; Tom’s chambermaid in Santa Barbara is another” (Page 79, Oral Aggression and Splitting, A.B. Paulson). Tom’s poor behavior and disloyalty towards Daisy is merely to satisfy his own needs and he does not care to consider the feelings of those around him. Though he is unfair to Daisy, he still demands for her to live up to the moral standards that he conclusively lacks “Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy’s running around alone, for on the following Saturday night he came
The notion that a man's success can be measured by his possessions becomes evident through the actions of Tom, Gatsby and Wilson. These characters strive to obtain more than just material possessions. For example, Tom seems to view the women in his life as mere possessions, a sign of his success and wealth. His attitude and interactions with Daisy, his wife, and Myrtle, his mistress, demonstrate this. Through out the story, Tom does not show respect or genuine caring for either woman. Rather, he commits open adultery with Myrtle. Tom makes this affair public because it is just another way of showing-off, another of his possessions and thus boosting his ego. Tom does this without regard for the shame his affairs may bring onto his wife.
Tom is an unfaithful, dominant and aggressive men who is also married to the women of Daisy. Because Tom is in the upper class unlike Myrtle, he has the impression of being royalty to her, meaning he can verbally scold her, physically attack her, and he would not feel the same if he was to take on such actions towards daisy, because Myrtle is just his mistress. Despite the way Tom treats Myrtle, she still remains to have an affair with him, as she know he is the open gates of entering the rich lifestyle she so desperately wants to be in. George Wilson on the other hand, is mostly known for being undistinguished. He is first described as a "blond, spiritless man, anemic, and faintly handsome" (63). There 's no sign of him being unique, and it would be easy to forget about his presence- which is how Myrtle perceives him most of the time. For instance, George and Myrtle have been married for approximately twelve years and surprisingly do not have any children. The most eye capturing sentence in the novel of why Myrtle has yet to make a child was the comment she made towards George while in the city: I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn 't fit to lick my shoe" (34). One would say Myrtle has very little self respect for herself and would let Tom wrongly use her in any kind of way (even a punch
“And in the end it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
While Gatsby always wanted wealth, his main incentive to become rich is his love for Daisy, the true love of his life. Gatsby uses money for love. Myrtle, on the other hand, truly desires money. Myrtle uses “love” in the form of a so-called romantic relationship with Tom to attain the lifestyle she desperately desires. Even though she says that she loves Tom, Myrtle, the most independent woman in the story, wants wealth so much that she puts up with a lot of humiliation at the expense of Tom whom she really is just using to better her social status. Myrtle’s affair with Tom is not because she actually loves him more than George. What she really loves is the life that she thinks that Tom can get her. Her motivations are more superficial than Gatsby’s and are illustrated by how impressed she was with Tom’s suit and her distain for the fact that George had to borrow another man’s suit to marry
Do you think you would have a happy life if you were incredibly rich? You might think that being rich and able buy anything you wanted would give you a happy life. However, as The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald shows money does not bring a happy life. Many of the book’s characters have all the money they could ever need, but there are still things they want that money can’t buy.
In prevalent society, wealth and the achievement in the American Dream seems to be the equivalence to happiness. The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, incorporates the themes of social class and money by describing the contrasting lifestyle between the rich and the poor in the 1920s. In this story, Jay Gatsby spends time trying to recreate his image in order to impress the love of his life, Daisy. Although Gatsby’s interpretation of happiness was to have the American dream and become the stereotype of white men living in luxury, he ultimately doesn’t reach the level of happiness he wants. The story of The Great Gatsby discusses the characters’ careless spending of money and their belief that happiness comes from money.