Mccarthyism In The Great Gatsby

The flower that is the American Dream continues to wither as the Tom Buchanans and the Meyer Wolfsheims of the time promote the rise of an underworld in both literary and real life 1920’s America. The Tom Buchanans control the legal institutions while the Meyer Wolfsheims rule the illegal. There is a mutual dependence between the two, the Tom Buchanans want booze and the Meyer Wolfsheims don’t want to have a run in with the law. So, the Wolfsheims supply the Buchanan’s with bootlegged liquor in exchange for continuing business free of repercussions from the law. The Twenties are tainted by this relationship as it corrupts government and promotes the “values” of the new American Dream, which are along the lines of: money is money regardless

of how its earned, and the more earned the better. Gatsby expert Bob Batchelor writes in his book Gatsby: The Cultural History of the Great American Novel, “So much drinking takes place in Gatsby that one almost forgets that the novel is set during Prohibition”(Batchelor 157).

The beginning of the Roaring Twenties was defined by the passing of the 18th Amendment, banning the manufacturing, selling, and, drinking of alcohol (Kallen 15). The Prohibition era blends with the events of The Great Gatsby opening up ways to financial prosperity and fame for people who otherwise would have never achieved either through the business of bootlegging. The massive demand for liquor, particularly among the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) made it possible for many people including Jay Gatsby to become “filthy” rich by satisfying these needs. Gatsby used bootlegging during this time to make millions, bringing him a step closer to reaching his dream of getting Daisy back. Bootlegging is the “get rich quick” method of the 1920’s, contradicting the concept that the American Dream is achieved through honest, hard work. Prohibition and the rise of organized crime play a key part in corrupting the values of the American Dream thus further promoting its decline. Lehan believes, “Prohibition only extended the activities of the New York underworld, which The Great Gatsby catches with great

precision. The lunch Gatsby and Nick have with Meyer Wolfsheim catches the spirit of Fitzgerald’s own meeting with Arnold Rothstein, on whom Wolfsheim is modeled” (Lehan 7). It’s more than likely that the origin of Gatsby and notorious gambler Meyer Woflsheim’s “friendship” was because of his connections to bootlegging through his drugstores. Wolfsheim is a cunning gangster who “fixed” the 1919 World Series and when Nick asks Gatsby why he is not in jail for his deeds Gatsby replies, “They can’t get him, old sport. He’s a smart man” (Fitzgerald 78). Wolfsheim reveals Gatsby’s dark side and how his dream was utterly corrupted. Gatsby is not a morally corrupt man by nature. However, dues to his affiliation with deceptive, erratic people such as Wolfsheim he slowly becomes more like them. Jeffery Decker writes in his article Gatsby’s Pristine Dream: The Diminishment of the Self-Made Man in the Tribal Twenties, after Gatsby’s death, Nick inquires about his desceased friends source of wealth “Wolfsheim’s recollection functions to reconfirm the new threat posed by the immigrant to moral uplift and ethical entrepreneurship. To Nick’s inquiry… Wolfsheim replies, ‘Start him! I made him,’…‘I raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right away he was a fine appearing gentlemanly young man and when he told me he was an Oggsford I knew I could use him good. . . Wolfsheim’s depiction of Gatsby’s success helps confirm the findings of Tom’s investigation. Not only is Gatsby ‘raised . . . up out of nothing,’ he is ‘made’ not by the sweat of his honest brow but by the black hand of the immigrant gangster” (Decker 55). This news from Wolfsheim indirectly proves that Gatsby really does not fit in with the old money crowd that Daisy and Tom Buchanan are a part of. The discovery that Gatsby made his money through illegal means and that he is originally from the lower class become crucial reasons Daisy chooses Tom in the end. Daisy’s discoveries of these two facts basically ruin any and every chance of Gatsby achieving his American dream of spending the rest of his life with her.
There is a sense of hopelessness evident at the end of The Great Gatsby as well as at the end of the 1920s. According to famed literary critic Harold Bloom, “[For Fitzgerald] the Jazz Age began in 1918 and ended in 1929— dates he would later personalize; his flapper comes into being at the age of eighteen, and the illusions of youth fade at twenty-nine. Even in The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, these dates take on a kind of prescient significance: Gatsby and Daisy consummate their love when she is eighteen, and Nick turns thirty the day that Gatsby’s dream dies” (Bloom 5-6). On that fateful day where Nick turns thirty, while at the Buchanan’s house Gatsby says, “Her [Daisy] voice is full of money”, here Nick has a sort of epiphany about Daisy and the society in which she lives, “That was it. I’d never understood it before. It was full of money-that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals song of it… High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl”(Fitzgerald 120). Nick realizes that Daisy really just a pretty girl with money, that’s all she has to offer to society. The dream Gatsby has been obsessed with for the past five years was not one of love, but of money hidden behind a pretty human face. The next day when Gatsby dies, it is similar to the stock market crash of 1929 better known as “Black Tuesday”. Daisy throughout the novel has been connected to the color white, symbolizing her surface innocence even though her actions are selfish and corrupt. The color white is also related to the original American Dream the name “Black Tuesday” reflects the tainting of the values that make up the early American Dream. Gatsby’s death and Black Tuesday both make clear that any chance of the old American Dream surviving in the dehumanized, corrupt modern world is impossible, and, the American Dream has been murdered by greed, materialism, and, most of all money. All hopes and dreams that strengthened Gatsby and America are shattered. After killing Gatsby, George Wilson turns his revolver toward himself and pulls the trigger, committing suicide. The deaths of both the rich and poor man trying to achieve their goals is symbolic of the death of the old American Dream. All of these events in the novel can be traced back to the moral devolution of one character: Daisy Buchanan. Daisy is responsible for both Wilson and Gatsby’s deaths, literally and in regards to the American Dream. First, Daisy was the one driving when Gatsby’s car hit Myrtle Wilson, killing her instantly. Then, Daisy let Gatsby literally take the bullet for her actions that killed Myrtle. Daisy killing Myrtle kills Wilson’s American Dream as he wanted to move out West with her and her choosing Tom kills Gatsby’s American Dream. In reality during this time the frontier was “closed” therefore Wilson’s American Dream was like Gatsby’s already behind him. The most disturbing thing about the whole situation is Daisy’s inability to take any responsibility for the situation, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy, they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made”(Fitzgerald 136).
“.. Some idea of himself… had gone into loving Daisy”(Fitzgerald 110). Gatsby places Daisy on a pedestal of perfection, this naïve, idealistic perfection that no human especially someone as indecisive and selfish as Daisy could ever possible live up to. The hopelessness at the end of the novel when it is apparent that Daisy has made up her mind parallels the hopelessness that hit America after Black Tuesday. Daisy literally is a representation of the wealthy, old money young women of the time period whose only contribution to society was being rich and pretty. Daisy however also philosophically resembles innocence, and perfection during her early life, much like the original American Dream. However like, the American Dream in the Roaring Twenties she loses her values and becomes morally tarnished and misleading over time. Daisy Buchanan’s moral devolution in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby represents the corruption and inevitable death of the original American Dream in the 1920’s, Daisy Buchanan proves that all the American Dream is, is just a dream.