The Great Gatsby's Focus On Social Classes

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Novels and stories are often written by an author with the intent on leaving the reader with some important piece of advice or a message. In several stories, readers can find hints and underlying themes about social problems and solutions to such problems. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s style of writing drips with underlying themes and symbols. His most popular work, The Great Gatsby, focuses on social classes in the 1920’s. The social divides between different classes cause many problems and people get mentally and physically hurt. Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway are two characters in this novel that get caught up in their social classes and are living in the past.

One example is the love affair between Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby. Before Daisy took …show more content…

Gatsby realizes that he cannot be with Daisy because of social classes, so he tries to change his status. Gatsby was born as James Gatz to a poor farming family in the Midwest. He hated life and decided he would change his destiny. He changed his name to Jay Gatsby and became the man Daisy knew before he was shipped off to war. Daisy changed everything Gatsby ever wanted and had ever dreamed of. At that point in Gatsby’s life, he was still in the middle class, but he was slowly rising. After the war, Gatsby becomes determined to become king of the world in order to win back Daisy’s love. Nick Carraway describes Gatsby by mentioning, “He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy,”(110). Daisy haunts Gatsby’s every thought and he will stop at nothing to win her love back. In order to do so, Gatsby realizes he must still become richer. He becomes involved in some shady business with the mob and picks jobs of odds and ends to earn his living. Soon, Gatsby is known as the mysterious, New-Money rich man who throws wild parties for anyone who wants to attend. Later in the novel, Nick discovers that Gatsby’s elegant lifestyle and parties are all in order to get Daisy’s attention. Gatsby lives directly across the bay from Daisy, and he did everything to catch her attention. He finally gets her attention and they try to reignite their love for one another. However, Daisy realizes she hates the way Gatsby lives his life, and it still would be socially unacceptable for her to leave Tom and run away with Gatsby. Gatsby tries to speak for Daisy and say that she never loved Tom, but Daisy did love Tom. Daisy loved Tom with a different love than her love for Gatsby. She truly loved Gatsby, but she loved Tom for his money and status. She could not bare to leave Tom and the Old-Money lifestyle behind, so she stayed with

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