The Great Gatsby is one of America’s most famously known novels written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The success of the novel is not only due to its rich content but also its outstanding connection of what it was like living during the 1920’s. My main focus is to view The Great Gatsby through a Marxism lens in reason to why the novel is related to the configurations of power, society, and ideology during the 1920’s. Marxist Criticism deals with focusing on the ideological content of a work of literature and its explicit and implicit assumptions and values about matters like culture, race, class, and power. Marxist Critics view the literature as a reflection of the author’s own class or as an analysis of class relations (Marxist Criticism).
If one were to look at The Great Gatsby using a Marxism approach, they would know that the 1920’s were filled with partying, bootlegging, and jazz music. F. Scott Fitzgerald interpreted this time in history to be filled with extremely shallow people who were infatuated with materialistic things. People were obsessed with money and would do anything in order to create the image of wealth for themselves. The Great Gatsby can be seen as a novel that explores 1920′s America from a political view of social class and structure. Fitzgerald reflects social status through geographical locations in America and distinguishes the characters by their traits, lifestyles and mentalities (Dutta).
During this era, society showed that men held superior power over women. This is shown though many of the actions that men had towards women in the novel. We can see that Fitzgerald is criticizing American society in the 1920’s through his examples of power that the male characters had over the women in the novel. One ex...
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...h, which is shown through her carelessness towards other people. One example is when she lets Gatsby take the blame for the unintentional manslaughter of her husband’s mistress. America’s fascination with materialistic things is relevant to the moral values and obsession with wealth and power that still corrupts society to this day.
The people surrounding Fitzgerald and the people surrounding Gatsby were great examples of how society acted during the 1920’s. It was filled with people who were willing to do anything in order to satisfy their personal needs or help them acquire money (Enotes). Gatsby’s “American Dream” was driven by capitalism and materialism. The novel gives a realistic view of a tainted society and culture during this era and the things people would do in order to boost their social standing, even if it were extremely selfish, immoral, or illegal.
However, Fitzgerald does not write Gatsby as a bad person who embodies all that is wrong with western capitalism. Instead, Fitzgerald portrays Gatsby as a good man who was victim of the qualities ingrained in him by an imperfect ideological system. It is this distinction which makes Fitzgerald’s argument all the more potent, and his audience’s ability to mourn Gatsby as a tragic figure all the more important. Whereas Fitzgerald’s opinion of Gatsby may otherwise have been misconstrued as a negative one, the scene of Gatsby’s funeral clearly conveys the character of Gatsby as a tragic and sorrowful one. The character of Gatsby and Fitzgerald’s commentary on the logical fallacies of the American Dream are closely intertwined, which is why Fitzgerald goes to such great lengths to separate the two.
The emerging inequitable class systems and antagonisms of the nineteen twenties saw the traditional order and moral values challenged, as well as the creation of great wealth for few and poverty for many. The Great Gatsby, written by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, explores the causes and effects of the unbalanced class structures. Fitzgerald outlines the idea that the desire to accumulate wealth and status is a common ambition amongst the lower classes; when that desire is reached, the traditional upper class is challenged by the emerging newly wealthy, which finally leads to destructive consequences. By creating rigid class structures, traditional upper class, new wealth, and the poor in The Great Gatsby, it is shown that the desire to further or maintain socio-economic status leads to immoral behaviour such as criminal activity, adultery, and murder.
Through the use of symbolism and critique, F. Scott Fitzgerald is able to elucidate the lifestyles and dreams of variously natured people of the 1920s in his novel, The Great Gatsby. He uses specific characters to signify diverse groups of people, each with their own version of the “American Dream.” Mostly all of the poor dream of transforming from “rags to riches”, while some members of the upper class use other people as their motivators. In any case, no matter how obsessed someone may be about their “American Dream”, Fitzgerald reasons that they are all implausible to attain.
Throughout “The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald characterizes the citizens of East Egg as careless in some form. This relates to the prominent class issue seen all through “Gatsby.” It seems as though Daisy and Tom almost look down upon others. At one point in the book, Nick says “in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.” It is because of their belief of superiority that they deem themselves better than other and allows them to live so carelessly.
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.
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.
Written during and regarding the 1920s, ‘The Great Gatsby’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald is both a representation of this distinctive social and historical context, and a construction of the composer’s experience of this era. Beliefs and practises of the present also play a crucial role in shaping the text, in particular changing the way in which literary techniques are interpreted. The present-day responder is powerfully influenced by their personal experiences, some of which essentially strengthen Fitzgerald’s themes, while others compete, establishing contemporary interpretations of the novel.
The 1920s was of time of class, rich people thrived, woman started to revolutionize, music, and everything started to change. Major things happened during this time period including, discrimination against minorities and women pushing for natural rights. F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of, The Great Gatsby, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota during the 1920s into a family with high social aspirations but little wealth. He attended Princeton University in 1913 in hopes of becoming something more in life but failed to graduate. After serving for the army Fitzgerald wrote his first book and became wealthy and famous( Wiggins, Grant. The American Experience: California. 2010.pp 729). Two of many themes in the The Great Gatsby are resistance to change and the “new woman”. There were numerous events that led to these changes in the 1920s and many had a huge significance to the nation and still affect us today.
In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald reflects the American society in the 1920’s and the different social groups that coexisted. The Great Gatsby portrays the failure of the American Dream, where corruption, illegal trading, superficial relationships, and social classes take the main roles. The author demonstrates how the American dream has become a pursuit of wealth and materialism through the exploration of the upper class. In addition, the author uses characterization to reflect the upper class in the 1920’s as two separate groups: the “old” money, and the “new money”. These are shown through the main characters in the novel, such as Gatsby and Tom Buchanan.
In the novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald is criticizing American society of the 1920s. He uses the characters to demonstrate the power than men had over women during these times, as well as their mindless, self-indulgent actions, where consequence was only an afterthought. The attitude towards and the role of women is shown throughout the novel. Fitzgerald also shows how many people in America during this time were delusional and had meaningless existences.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was a romantic character in both his fiction life and his real life and “…was perhaps the last notable writer to affirm the Romantic fantasy, descended from the Renaissance, of personal ambition and heroism, of life committed to, or thrown away for, some ideal of self"(Voegeli). The inspiration for The Great Gatsby came from the experience Fitzgerald had with a Jewish bootlegger and his symbolism for the book is “never more ingenious than in his depiction of the bankruptcy of the old agrarian myth” (Trask). The realization that America had been changed and transformed into a new world arose. America has become a new world with a new set of traditional beliefs. The beliefs were onset by the growing fields of industrialization and urbanization. America is now a place in which “a revolution in manners and morals was inevitable” (Trask). The trend of this new life style and tradition was reinforced by World War 1 and the writers critiqued the traditional faiths. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald paints a story about love and intrigue. He shows the possibility of movement between the different social classes during the Roaring Twenties in the United States. The American dream was the thought that people who had talent in the 'land of opportunity' could gain success if they followed a set of well-defined behavioral rules. During this time period, Americans believed that satisfaction would automatically follow success. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald raises many important political questions: "What does it mean to live well, and on what terms people can live together?” and it shows America's thoughts and answers to these essential questions (Voegeli). These questions are referring to the different social classes and be...
The 1920’s was a time of great change to both the country lived in as well as the goals and ambitions that were sought after by the average person. During this time, priorities shifted from family and religion to success and spontaneous living. The American dream, itself, changed into a self centered and ongoing personal goal that was the leading priority in most people’s lives. This new age of carelessness and naivety encompasses much of what this earlier period is remembered for. In addition, this revolution transformed many of the great writers and authors of the time as well as their various works. The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, perfectly symbolizes many emergent trends of the 1920’s. More importantly the character of Jay Gatsby is depicted as a man amongst his American dream and the trials he faces in the pursuit of its complete achievement. His drive for acquiring the girl of his dreams, Daisy Buchanan, through gaining status and wealth shows many aspects of the authors view on the American dream. Through this, one can hope to disassemble the complex picture that is Fitzgerald’s view of this through the novel. Fitzgerald believes, through his experiences during the 1920’s, that only fractions of the American Dream are attainable, and he demonstrates this through three distinct images in The Great Gastby.
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." [i] Marxism is a specific branch of Socialist theory. Fitzgerald makes Gatsby a novel that is not inherently Marxist or even Socialist, but one that is imbued with Marxist theory. He does this by denouncing nonhumanitarianism, reification, and market value. Fitzgerald implies that the Capitalist system does not work because at the end of the novel, all of the characters that represent typical American Capitalism end up either dead or completely unhappy. Fitzgerald's criticisms work to warn 1920's Americans of their behavior and how destructive it can be.
The desire for sophisticated social class represented in The Great Gatsby can either destroy or build character and potential in a young person. Due to the fact Fitzgerald’s novel is flexible, the realistic and romanticized attributes can be interpreted in different ways. However, Fitzgerald’s technique utilized when building his social structure plays a major role in the novel’s penetration in high school academic literature.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald took place in the 1920’s when the nation was undergoing rapid economic, political, and social change. Looking through different literary lenses the reader is able to see the effects of these rapid changes. The marxist lens reflects the gap between rich and poor while the feminist lens showcases the patriarchal society.