Shallowness And Materialism In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

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Graham Hoyes DP1 English Literature HL Mrs. Dufour December 17, 2014 IOP Hello. My name is Graham Hoyes, a student of the DP1 Higher Level Literature class at St. John’s-Kilmarnock school. This is my individual oral presentation on how F. Scott Fitzgerald approaches the theme of moral shallowness and materialism in his novel, The Great Gatsby. I will be discussing how Fitzgerald represents the hysteria of the 1920s using the various settings in The Great Gatsby where the characters hide their moral shallowness in a state of materialistic self-gratification. Fitzgerald approaches this theme in his text as a means to suggest the problematic nature of consumerism which results in sacrificing one 's morality for personal gain and an illusion …show more content…

Second, settings (parties, west egg, east egg). Throughout the novel, Daisy Buchanan is shown to be a selfish, hurtful, and shallow woman. On the exterior, however, she is characterized as a woman of incredible beauty and charm, who wins the hearts of many men and has lives a materialistically successful life. This is a passage from when Nick first walks into the room where Daisy and Jordan Baker (a professional golfer and Daisy’s best friend) are sitting: “The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor” (Fitzgerald …show more content…

It was on the hottest day of the summer, and Daisy, Tom, Jordan, Nick, and Gatsby are having lunch at the Buchanan’s mansion. ‘”What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?” cried Daisy, “and the day after that, and the next thirty years?” “Don’t be morbid,” Jordan said. “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall” (Fitzgerald 125). With Daisy’s exclamation, Fitzgerald emphasizes her restlessness. By living a life supported by money and possessions, Daisy does not know what else she can do with her life. But Daisy doesn’t just wonder about what to do that afternoon, she questions what she will be doing for the next 30 years. By having Daisy wonder this, he brings to attention the naivety of the upper class in the 1920s – they are used to being supported by their money despite themselves being empty and shallow, which leads to a lack of productive judgement. They simply assume that things will be the same way in 30 years. As we can see from Gatsby’s parties and Tom’s party in New York, the upper class would temporarily solve their boredom with parties, drinking bootleg alcohol, and various day trips to kill time (for Tom and Daisy, that would be trips into New

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