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Social classes of the 1920s
Social classes of the 1920s
Social classes of the 1920s
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"Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca. The Great Gatsby tells the story of a man who came from nothing in order to achieve everything for the love of his life. However, during the 1920s, that everything was basically wealth. Wealth was one of the American Dreams, means to achieve prosperity through hard work. In the Great Gatsby, wealth appears to be a central theme, and it had been evident in the relation between Daisy and Tom, Myrtle and Tom, as well as the enigma Jay Gatsby.
An abstract model of wealth and its importance during the 1920s revolves around Daisy and Tom's marriage. Daisy was in love with Gatsby but knowing he is poor, she was unwilling to wait for him. She decided to go to a more secure person, Tom, who will provide her with the position she deserves. In chapter 7, Gatsby said, "she only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me". Although Daisy thought that wealth will achieve her happiness, both Daisy and Tom are cynical and bored with life. In
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chapter 1, Nick comments about Daisy's distant look and melancholic attitude. Moreover, Daisy clearly knows that Tom is having an affair even though she doesn’t know who the woman is. During Nick's dinner with Daisy, Tom, and Jordan, Tom's mistress calls. Despite this affair, Daisy doesn’t ask Tom for a divorce because after all, he is well-off and an aristocrat. For Daisy, luxury and prestige are the most vital values in life. Likewise, Tom's relationship with Myrtle isn't based on true love either. In the Valley of the Ashes, where life is hard and people are constantly searching for pennies, Myrtle and George Wilson lives. George, Myrtle's husband, works in a garage and obviously doesn’t receive much salary. In chapter 2, we see Tom slapping Myrtle in the face. However, Myrtle doesn’t show any intentions of leaving him, why? Tom is her key to changing her life and abandoning the harsh existence on the valley. Furthermore, Tom's excessive wealth cause him to play around here and there. When Myrtle asks to marry Tom, he lies saying that Daisy is a devout Catholic, and he can't divorce her. Obviously, Tom doesn’t have true intention with Myrtle, but he is just trying to create a game for himself since he achieved everything in life using the money. Gatsby is the walking example of how wealth was a factor in people's lives during the 1920s.
His real name is James Gatz, and he came from a poor family of farmers. However, Gatsby was discontent with his life, and he changed his name into a more "aristocratic" name. Throughout the story, we recognize that Gatsby's relation with Wolfshiem sounds illegal. Wolfshiem is a gambler and fixed the 1919 World Series, which shows how he, in Nick's words, would "play with the faiths of fifty million people in with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe". Additionally, everyone is interested in Gatsby, where he is the object of the rumor windmill. After all, you don’t find a wealthy person willing to conduct parties and spending money on people he absolutely doesn’t know every day. It is the desire for money and the status that comes with it what drove Gatsby to go to illegal extents. It was his belief that money would bring Daisy to
him. In a nutshell, cash was the driving force in most of the characters in the novel: Daisy abandoned Gatsby and went to Tom for it, Myrtle cheated on her husband and bore humiliation for bucks as well, and Gatsby put his life on the line as a criminal for dollars. Safely, it can be said that money was among the most pursued American Dreams. Yet, the characters are still going to realize that cash is nothing more than paper as it brings them to destruction. The first of these devastations is the cruel death of Myrtle Wilson.
Initially, Gatsby stirs up sympathetic feelings because of his obsession with wealth. Ever since meeting Dan Cody, his fascination for wealth has increased dramatically. He even uses illegal unmoral methods to obtain hefty amounts of wealth to spend on buying a house with “ Marie Antoinette music-rooms, Restoration Salons, dressing rooms and poolrooms, and bath rooms with sunken baths.” (88) His wardrobe is just as sensational with “ shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine fennel.” (89) Gatsby buys such posh items to impress Daisy but to him, Daisy herself is a symbol of wealth. Jay remarks, “[Daisy’s] voice is full of money.” (115). For him, Daisy is the one who is “ High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden gir...
In this day and age, money is a very important asset to have. One needs to have at least enough to live on, though great amounts are preferable. In The Great Gatsby, by Thomas F. Fitzgerald, having a large amount of money is not enough. It is also the way you acquire the money that matters. Gatsby and Tom both have a lot of money yet Daisey picks one over the other, not because of the difference in the amount they have, but because of the manner in which it is attained.
Through his vivid depiction of the valley of the ashes in the acclaimed novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald unveils the truth about 1920s America: economic prosperity did not guarantee happiness and resulted in depreciating conditions for those that were not able to connive their way to the top.
As a young man, Jay Gatsby was poor with nothing but his love for Daisy. He had attempted to woe her, but a stronger attraction to money led her to marry another man. This did not stop Gatsby’s goal of winning this woman for himself though, and he decided to improve his life anyway he could until he could measure up to Daisy’s standards. He eventually gained connections in what would seem to be the wrong places, but these gave him the opportunity he needed to "get rich quick." Gatsby’s enormous desire for Daisy controlled his life to the point that he did not even question the immorality of the dealings that he involved himself in to acquire wealth. Eventually though, he was able to afford a "castle" in a location where he could pursue Daisy effectively. His life ambition had successfully moved him to the top of the "new money" class of society, but he lacked the education of how to promote his wealth properly. Despite the way that Gatsby flaunted his money, he did catch Daisy’s attention. A chaotic affair followed for a while until Daisy was overcome by pressures from Gatsby to leave her husband and by the realization that she belonged to "old money" and a more proper society.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, captures a fine description of how life was in America during the Jazz Age. The Jazz Age signaled an end to traditional American values and a movement towards new ones. The purpose of The Great Gatsby was to show how traditional American values were abandoned and how the pursuit and desire for wealth could lead to the downfall of one’s dreams and goals in life. Happiness obtained from money is only an illusion, money has the power to corrupt and obscure one’s mind and lead one down the path of failure and misery. By using symbolism, imagery, and character personalities and traits, F. Scott Fitzgerald manipulates language to fulfill the purpose of The Great Gatsby.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, Gatsby’s obsessive pursuit of goals suggest that Fitzgerald believe that obsessiveness and constant desires often lead to a wrong psychological impact, destructive of one’s traditions, morals, and would have an unplanned end of the lesson or life.
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 American Dream is something common to most individuals, however it's one thing that everybody views in several ways. The American Dream is totally different for everybody, however they share a number of a similar aspects of it. The dream relies mainly on the setting of wherever one lives and one‘s social status. for instance, The Declaration of Independence was by Thomas Jefferson, who was an upper class white male. He needed freedom, however freedom for people like himself that were white land owning people. martin luther King, in his I have a Dream speech, also demanded freedom, but mostly for African Americans like him. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his book the great Gatsby, that he wants to eliminate the rich, which he was a section of. every American Dream is somewhat totally different, however all of them relate to the days that one lives in.
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 “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.
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.
Benjamin Franklin once said “Money has never made man happy, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness." This is arguably one of the most cliché quotes of all time. If money cannot provide happiness, then what exactly can it do? The characters of Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan open a door to a world in which money was the sole motivation for their success and the only reason for their power. When the reader uses a Marxist critical lens during chapter four of F. Scott 's Fitzgerald 's The Great Gatsby, the social hierarchy reveals how Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan utilize the importance of money and social power to manipulate others in their lives.
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, tells the story of a man of meager wealth who chases after his dreams, only to find them crumble before him once he finally reaches them. Young James Gatz had always had dreams of being upper class, he didn't only want to have wealth, but he wanted to live the way the wealthy lived. At a young age he ran away from home; on the way he met Dan Cody, a rich sailor who taught him much of what he would later use to give the world an impression that he was wealthy. After becoming a soldier, Gatsby met an upper class girl named Daisy - the two fell in love. When he came back from the war Daisy had grown impatient of waiting for him and married a man named Tom Buchanan. Gatsby now has two coinciding dreams to chase after - wealth and love. Symbols in the story, such as the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock, the contrast between the East Egg and West Egg, and the death of Myrtle, Gatsby, and Wilson work together to expose a larger theme in the story. Gatsby develops this idea that wealth can bring anything - status, love, and even the past; but what Gatsby doesn't realize is that wealth can only bring so much, and it’s this fatal mistake that leads to the death of his dreams.
Three works Cited Materialism started to become a main theme of literature in the modernist era. During this time the economy was good causing jazz to be popular, bootlegging common, and an affair meaning nothing (Gevaert). This negative view of money and the gross materialism in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby serves to be a modern theme in the novel. Throughout the novel, the rich possess a sense of carelessness and believe that money yields happiness.
Having married a wealthy man, Daisy possesses all of the finer things in life. Nevertheless, these fine material objects are unable to conceal her shallow and superficial nature (Cowley 20). Not only is her affluence powerless to hide these negative qualities but, in actuality, it accentuates Daisy’s artificial nature by highlighting the importance that she puts on meaningless things such as fancy parties and fashion. She pettily judges people and objects by their material value (Bewley 23). When Daisy observes Gatsby’s cache of fine shirts, she is impressed by this grand demonstration of materialism: “‘They’re such beautiful shirts,’ she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. ‘It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such -- such beautiful shirts before’” (Fitzgerald 93-94). Daisy’s admiration for these trivial objects shows that she is consumed by the materialism of the era, and that she values the love of money over true love (Bewley 23-24). For this reason, Daisy is unwilling to divorce her well-established and influential husband to marry Gatsby. Her decision to remain committed to Tom does not stem from any moral righteousness or recognition of the sanctity of marriage. In fact, Daisy has demonstrated her disregard for higher moral principles by her dishonorable action of