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The movie “The Great Gatsby” illustrates the stereotypes and the conditions that society lived in, the different roles and duties society had in order to be successful. Regardless gender or color the chance for success must be distributive as equal, but it was not distribute equally. Society set of mind were negatively despised by lower class. "A person who was not well-to-do and who did not belong to the right club or attend the right school was considered not only poor, but sinful. The pursuit of wealth came to have a meaning which transcended the mere desire to be more comfortable. It served in an attempt to erase original sin and earn eternal salvation. Striving for wealth has become a way for Americans to ease their consciences, while
one’s morality is often measured by the ability to acquire material possessions”. John A. Pidgeon. Just like Mr. Gatsby, who came originally from a very poor family, his parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. Gatsby set of mind was very elevated, he claimed to be “Gods son”. “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. Choices play a huge role in society’s future, its what the termites the impacts whether is it positive or negative. Gatsby at very young age decided to practice the first tenets, “ Anyone can pursue success”. He left his family behind, and decided to start fresh. Gatsby educated himself and learned the behavior of successful people, obtaining the opportunity to level up him economic status. Mr. Gatsby accomplished his goals, he was one of the most richest men in American, people said that, “He had more money than God”. Does this prove that the first tenet can be obtainable? Opportunities are priorities of a successful status, for anyone to have success they must achieve opportunities. Nick Carraway went to New York City in search for new opportunities, which he eventually found them out, for instance his neighbor Gatsby, a rich man with a lots of experience and knowledge was there for Carraway to help him succeed. But, Carraway destiny wasn't money, his passion was to write, to become a writer. Being successful financially isn't for everyone, but being successful as a whole is possibly for everyone and anyone. Everyone has a goal and a duty to do in life, is what keeps us happily entertain. Those goals are the ones that make society work even harder, making society productively active. The American dream is achieve through hard work to be able to obtain success. “Our nation was built, summed up in Thomas Jefferson’s expression that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights to liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness. In other words, America was to be a place where men were politically free to pursue whatever goal they wished”. John A. Pidgeon
The recurring themes of society, class, and self identity can be seen throughout many different writings of the 20th century. Two of these writings include, “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald and, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston. Both novels focus on the protagonist's goal of achieving equal rights in their own environment while at the same time trying to figure out who they are in the world. In the early 1900s, when “Their Eyes Were Watching God” takes place, slavery had very recently been abolished (relatively speaking) and the lasting effects of segregation take a toll on Janie, the protagonist. In the Great Gatsby, although Jay Gatsby is white, and thus does not have to deal with the factor of race, he struggles with many different aspects of American Society, mainly the class system and the American Dream. The American dream depicted by F.Scott Fitzgerald is a desire to gain wealth and prosperity. However, at the same time the book does not suggest that wealth equates to success. Even though Gatsby does have material wealth, he is not successful in gaining what he wants to be happy. Despite his material wealth, Gatsby is never united with the love of his life, Daisy. This shows that even though Gatsby has achieved the dream of wealth and prosperity, he has not achieved his final goal. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie too believes in the American Dream, and similarly to Gatsby, it is not a dream of wealth and prosperity. For her, it’s a dream of Freedom in all aspects of life. Both characters however, spend much of their time trying to conform to the rest of the world and essentially be like “everyone” else instead of trying to be distinct individuals. Societal norms of the early 1900s tak...
During the time in our country's history called the roaring twenties, society had a new obsession, money. Just shortly after the great depression, people's focus now fell on wealth and success in the economic realm. Many Americans would stop at nothing to become rich and money was the new factor in separation of classes within society. Wealth was a direct reflection of how successful a person really was and now became what many people strived to be, to be rich. Wealth became the new stable in the "American dream" that people yearned and chased after all their lives. In the novel entitled the great Gatsby, the ideals of the so called American dream became skewed, as a result of the greediness and desires of the main characters to become rich and wealthy. These character placed throughout the novel emphasize the true value money has on a persons place in society making wealth a state of mind.
The Great Gatsby set in the glistening and glittering world of wealth and glamour of 1920s Jazz Age in America. However, the story of the poor boy who tried to fulfill the American Dream of living a richer and fuller life ends in Gatsby’s demise. One of the reasons for the tragedy is the corrupting influence of greed on Gatsby. As soon as Gatsby starts to see money as means of transforming his fantasy of winning Daisy’s love into reality, his dream turns into illusion. However, other characters of the novel are also affected by greed. On closer inspection it turns out that almost every individual in the novel is covetous of something other people have. In this view, the meaning of greed in the novel may be varied The greed is universally seen as desire for material things. However, in recent studies the definition of “greed” has come to include sexual greed and greed as idolatry, understood as fascination with a deity or a certain image (Rosner 2007, p. 7). The extended definition of greed provides valuable framework for research on The Great Gatsby because the objects of characters’ desires can be material, such as money and possessions, or less tangible, such as love or relationship.
“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. Such is exemplified by Jay Gatsby, Myrtle Wilson and Tom Buchanan. Their ambitions distinctly represent their class in which Fitzgerald implies strongly about.
In ‘The Great Gatsby’ Fitzgerald criticises the increase of consumerism in the 1920s and the abandonment of the original American Dream , highlighting that the increased focus on wealth and the social class associated with it has negative effects on relationships and the poorest sections of society. The concept of wealth being used as a measure of success and worth is also explored by Plath in ‘The Bell Jar’. Similarly, she draws attention to the superficial nature of this material American Dream which has extended into the 1960s, but highlights that gender determines people’s worth in society as well as class. Fitzgerald uses setting to criticise society’s loss of morality and the growth of consumerism after the Great War. The rise of the stock market in the 1920s enabled business to prosper in America.
It’s been ingrained into the fabric of society that to be truly happy in life, one needs to be wealthy. The characters in The Great Gatsby show this is not always the case, and that wealth is not always as important as one would believe. Society has always placed a significant importance on being rich, being wealthy. It makes one believe that being wealthy is the only true way to live a happy and fulfilling life. With this in mind, many readers are going to look at the characters in The Great Gatsby, such as Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, and fantasize about one day living the lifestyle that they live. While many characters in The Great Gatsby would appear from the outside to be living the American Dream, it what lies underneath this image of
This essay discusses the role of social mobility in Great Gatsby. It argues that not all people can reach the highest social class, this is a class you must belong to from the beginning of life or marry in to. However, the characters are living the American dream which makes social mobility to the other social classes available. The essay addresses the American Dream, the difference in social class between the main characters, and how social mobility is unreachable. There are two frames of values for social mobility in The Great Gatsby.
‘The Great Gatsby’ is social satire commentary of America which reveals its collapse from a nation of infinite hope and opportunity to a place of moral destitution and corruption during the Jazz Age. It concentrates on people of a certain class, time and place, the individual attitudes of those people and their inner desires which cause conflict to the conventional values, defined by the society they live in. Gatsby is unwilling to combine his desires with the moral values of society and instead made his money in underhanded schemes, illegal activities, and by hurting many people to achieve the illusion of his perfect dream.
A student of Sigmund Freud (Carl Gustav Jung) theorized that humans can only understand their existence and purpose by being able to identify archetypes and universal symbols. In The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, many of the characters have specific traits that define their personality. Fitzgerald uses many archetypes in the novel that extends the understanding of each character, through the Jungian lens, proving that the characters are developed through the Jungian theory and lens. Fitzgerald develops the understanding of the characters; Jay Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, and Daisy Buchanan, with the archetypes; ‘The Protector’, ‘The Oppressor’, and ‘The Sexual Temptress’.
Racism is very prominent in the late 1920’s. White people establish segregated institutions and they feel as though, because they are white, they are inherently superior to all other races. In The Great Gatsby, set in the 1920’s, F. Scott Fitzgerald subtly shows this racism. Three main characters show the racism: Nick, an unsuccessful businessman; Tom, a wealthy polo player; and Daisy, Tom’s wealthy wife. Nick narrates the story so the racism he exhibits is shown in his descriptions and perceptions of others around him. Racism towards African- Americans and Jews also comes up frequently in normal conversation between the Buchanans and Nick. The white society, represented by Nick and the Buchanans, feel like they are superior to other races and they are entitled to subjugate them.
The distance between the wealthy class and the rest has grown, but so has the idea of noblesse oblige. The Great Gatsby clearly shows all of these issues as they were in the ‘20s, and all of them can be paralleled to show the same issues in today’s times. Works Cited Auchincloss, Louis. A. “The American Dream: All Gush and Twinkle.” Reading on the Great Gatsby.
Lukianoff and Haidt (2015) offer many examples depiciting student hypersensitivity and overreactions by campus administrators and officials. For example, they describe several instances where trigger warnings were called for against notable literary works such as Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby for their portrayals of misogyny, racial violence, and physical abuse. The authors admit that many of the examples they describe are extreme and surreal, but then they go right ahead and use these isolated and extreme instances to paint a picture of campus “coddling, hypersensitivity, and overreaction” as a nation-wide cultural phenomenon: “It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse” (Lukianoff and Haidt, 2015).
As mentioned before, racism was a subtle yet growing epidemic throughout the United States during the 1920s. Fitzgerald paints the images of subjectively five successful individuals who ultimately have achieved the American dream, yet with regard to their background Fitzgerald doesn’t include other ethnic groups besides the predominant white race. Yet here, one could question where Fitzgerald stands on the issue of racism; does he believe the race serves as an advantage towards the American Dream or barrier to success? Using seemingly white-supremacists Tom Buchanan and ambiguous, Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald quarrels with the idea of ethnicity and how it’s included with acquisition of the American Dream.
"We all use stereotypes, all the time, without knowing it. We have met the enemy of equality, and the enemy is us." (Paul). When people stereotype, they judge a group of people who are different from them based on their own opinions and generalized facts. Stereotypes can be negative or positive, but most of the time negative and untrue. Americans, as a whole, always seemed to get stereotyped negatively. Apparently, others view all Americans as ignorant, gun-loving, fat, and racist. The stereotypical definition of Americans needs to change because it does not truly represent who Americans really are. Although some Americans might possess certain examples of those traits,
To Gatsby, his idolization of the extremely rich led him to inherit certain shallow ideals, which over time, caused him to lose focus on what should and should be given meaningful value. As Gatsby continued to surround himself with rich and powerful people, along with living in the 1920’s, he became engulfed in many materialistic and shallow ideals, leading to the corruption of is American Dream. While his dream becomes corrupt, Gatsby was not at fault, but it was rather the society’s fault as a whole. Society is at fault not only the time period, but also for the pressures that were put on Gatsby to be seen as achieved or successful. This included Daisy, as she could not marry someone poorer than her, which ultimately led Gatsby to believe he wasn't enough. Thus, his desire to be seen as equal to Daisy overtook him, until ultimately, he was left blinded by what he had worked so hard for, money. His constant fuel for more is what led materialistic and shallow ideals to be apart of everyday life for Gatsby, along with outside pressures from