Prohibition Era: A Mistake Remembered in the Roaring 20's

The United States and our government has been shaped entirely from its past. We have learned right from wrong, what has worked and what has failed. The 1920s was a time in our country where the government created a law that upset the people. This decade is often referred to as The Roaring 20’s, The Jazz Age, The Prohibition Era, The Cocktail Era, etc. All these names perfectly describe this time, but it was also a time to learn from the mistake of creating a law that prohibited alcohol. This law played such a huge role in the decade, and has been forever remembered. The Great Gatsby is a romance novel that also hints on the time of prohibition. F. Scott Fitzgerald talked greatly about alcohol and the part it took in The Roaring 20 's. Though

This is seen throughout the novel in obvious ways, but also hinted at in minor ways as well. James Gatz became the wealthy, well known Jay Gatsby, but nobody knows for a fact how he came into the wealth that he did. Tom Buchanan makes some accusations of Gatsby and how he assumes he got his wealth. He says “He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That’s one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn’t wrong” (F. Scott Fitzgerald, ch. 7). “Prohibition made alcohol illegal, but it did not eliminate it. Illegal producers known as moonshiners sold their illegal product to illegal distributors known as bootleggers, who in turn sold it to illegal retail establishments known as speakeasies” (Mark Thornton). There was a chain of different ways that a person could get alcohol and then get away with drinking it, or even selling it. Government officials or police officers could easily be bribed to let off people who were illegal producing alcohol. Some doctors were even against the prohibition. They would prescribe alcohol to their patients as medical liquor, then drug stores would give out these prescriptions as if it was legitimate. We can only assume, since it isn 't stated directly in the novel, but this is why Gatsby and Wolfsheim owned drug stores, and that is how Gatsby made is fortune (Mark Thornton). Gatsby never denies these accusations that Tom made, which makes it seem as if they are