The Upper Class In The Great Gatsby

In the book The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald, the author, explores the lives of the upper class through the narrator Nick, who is not quite inside the upper class, but isn’t lower class either, and so is in the perfect position to tell the story from an impartial standpoint. Tom and Daisy represent the upper class, and Gatsby represents the lower class that has risen to wealth, and has since found out that wealth is not all it seems to be. Through Nick, Fitzgerald is trying to teach readers that being rich isn’t all it cracks up to be, because wealthy people tend to live immoral, lonely, and unpassionate lives.

Throughout the book, Nick has commented or insinuated about how truly immoral the rich are. Nick, ever since he has moved to West Egg,

has learned that the rich don’t really follow an honor code or social construct of behavior. In his opinion, they all think that they are better than others, and are above society. This is demonstrated numerous times, but one strong example of this is when Daisy and Tom just went on their way after Gasty died, ignoring that his death was their fault. Nick’s feelings toward them were demonstrated when he said, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things...and then retreated back into their money...and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (Fitzgerald 139). And, to further prove the immorality of the upper class, both Tom and Daisy are cheating on each other, and not only do they act like it’s all right, but everyone else acts as if it's just a normal thing, something that is to be expected. “...and it was because of this that I first met Tom’s mistress. The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known” (Fitzgerald 18). Overall, as Nick learns more about his wealthy friends, he realizes they are all corrupt, and wants nothing to do with them.
Nick has also learned that despite having many friends and large social circles, the wealthy are inclined to be very lonely people. When he first meets Daisy and Tom, he thinks that they have everything, but very quickly realizes that despite their marriage, they are both alone, unloving and untrusting of each other. When he meets Gatsby, he realizes that being rich can be truly lonely. Gatsby had hundreds of people around him in life, yet in death, a mere handful of people are there to pay him their final respects. “About five o’clock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery...Mr. Gatz and the minister and I, and later four or five servants and the postman…” (Fitzgerald 135). This shows that none of the people that Gatsby was around, that he called friends, were actually close to him, or actually cared. The rich care only about what can bring them color in a colorless life. And in life, Gatsby could, so they used him, but in death, he was useless, and so they ignored him. Nick has learned that the rich are very lonely, something that humans have trouble with, and decides that he would rather be poor than live like that.
The rich live unpassionate lives.

NIck realizes this much later into the book, but once he does his disillusionment is complete. For example, Nick describes Tom as “One of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at 21 that everything afterwards savors of anti-climax” (Fitzgerald 4), and goes on to tell of how Tom and Daisy had spent a year in France for “no particular reason,” and “drifted here and there unrestfully” (Fitzgerald 5). Daisy and Tom are shown to have dead, hollow, and boringly exciting lives. They have more than they what to do with, and in their attempts to feel excitement, they just sink deeper into boredom. Nick can be quoted as describing Gatsby “ - it was an extraordinary gift hope, a remote readiness such as I have never found in any other person, and which is not likely I shall ever find again. No - Gatsby turned out all right at the end…” (Fitzgerald 2). He thinks Gatsby is the only wealthy person to have truly had a purpose, to have truly lived. Nick, having experienced war and death, wants to live life to its fullest, and is completely disillusioned with the life of the wealth class.

The Great Gatsby was written by Fitzgerald as an outlet for his emotions and feelings about the behavior of society as a whole. Fitzgerald wants to inform others on the direction society is going in. As the book progresses, Nick has learned that being rich is not worth it, and that the wealthy upper class lives immoral, lonely, and unpassionate

lives.