As American actress Alexandra Paul said, “The cars we drive say a lot about us”. The cars we choose, while seemingly insignificant, say a lot about our personalities and social standings. In the 1920s, cars were becoming more readily available to the public, but were still expensive. Cars were seen as a sign of wealth, and those with the fanciest cars had the deepest pockets. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, cars prove to be an important symbol. Fitzgerald uses the automobile to foreshadow major events, give insight into characters, and explain the problems with the 1920s society.
In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses an automobile to foreshadow the death of Myrtle Wilson. After the party in chapter three, Nick observes a coupé
…show more content…
crashed in a ditch beside the road. The crowd gathered around the accident chides Owl Eyes, the supposed driver, for being so careless. He responds, “You don’t understand… I wasn’t driving. There’s another man in the car” (Fitzgerald 54). This case of mistaken identity is parallel to the situation with Daisy and Gatsby. While Daisy was the actual driver who hit Myrtle, Gatsby is accused and therefore suffers the consequences. Later on, while driving to New York with Gatsby, Nick sees a funeral procession. He observes, “A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms, followed by two carriages with drawn blinds, and by more cheerful carriages for friends” (Fitzgerald 68). By describing this scene, Fitzgerald associates cars with death. This makes Myrtle’s death by car believable as the tie between death and automobiles was already established. Fitzgerald uses cars most often throughout the novel to develop characters.
The cars they drive really do say a lot about them. In the city with Nick and Tom, Myrtle “let four taxicabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with gray upholstery” (Fitzgerald 27). Myrtle’s pickiness over which cab she takes shows her focus on material things rather than things of actual importance. Her materialism is most likely the effect of her efforts to play the role of someone in the upper class. Much like Myrtle, Gatsby’s efforts to enter the world of the Old Money is apparent with his choice of car. Gatsby’s car is “a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns… in a sort of leather green conservatory” (Fitzgerald 64). Conveniently colored green and yellow like money, Gatsby’s car is extravagant and superfluous. However, it is yellow like fake money, not gold, which shows that his attempts to fit in with the East Egg crowd are unsuccessful. Polar opposite to Gatsby and Myrtle in choice of car is Tom Buchanan. While he has all the money he could ever need, he drives a practical blue coupé. His Old Money taste shows through his simple choice of car, as it does not draw unnecessary attention to
him. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald incorporates an abundance of car accidents. Fitzgerald uses these accidents to explain the recklessness of people in the 1920s. Two accidents happen at Gatsby’s parties, the first with Owl Eyes and the second when Ripley Snell was “so drunk out on the gravel drive that Mrs. Ulysses Swett’s automobile ran over his right hand” (Fitzgerald 62). The casual attitude surrounding these incidents exemplifies society’s carelessness toward mistakes and their consequences. Another accident happened on Tom and Daisy’s honeymoon, when “Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night, and ripped a front wheel off his car. The girl who was with him got into the papers, too, because her arm was broken-she was one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara Hotel” (Fitzgerald 77). Tom’s accident shows his recklessness on two levels- first with his driving and second with his marriage. By having an affair with the chambermaid, he does not think about the consequences it will have on his relationship with Daisy. The last accident is by far the most memorable accident in the novel. Gatsby’s car, the “death car”, hit Myrtle Wilson, killing her instantly, but did not stop (Fitzgerald 137). Daisy not stopping the car after hitting Myrtle shows her lack of regard for the consequences of her actions. Later, when Gatsby is accused of being the driver, Daisy and Tom do not tell the truth, and let him pay for her error. These actions, or lack thereof, show the Old Money modus operandi of expecting others to clean up after their mistakes. In the 1920s, automobiles were becoming increasingly popular but were still a sign of wealth and status. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, he uses the automobile frequently. The automobile is used to foreshadow Myrtle’s death, develop characters, and discuss the reckless nature of society, especially that of the upper class.
In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses reckless driving as a metaphor to show the carelessness of the wealthy characters. Many of the characters are reckless drivers, such as Jordan Baker and Daisy Buchanan. They don’t seem to care about the well-being of other drivers that they may hurt from being bad drivers. In the novel, driving techniques symbolize social status and character which later channels death and destruction. In The Great Gatsby, the author uses reckless driving as a metaphor to show readers how people of higher social class live their lives in destructive ways.
Fitzgerald uses cars to demonstrate that the rich believe that they are superior and above all the rest. The rich use their money as a way to make their own rules. The people of higher class demonstrate that they can not take responsibility for their actions. They also go through life not caring what they leave behind. They speed through all decision they make not caring if they break hearts or take lives. Fitzgerald uses cars to symbolize the carelessness of the wealthy which ultimately leads to death.
Andrew T. Crosland, an expert on the Jazz Age writings of author F.Scott Fitzgerald, wrote that Fitzgerald 's The Great Gatsby included over 200 references to cars (Crosland). This is not surprising as the automobile, like the flapper were enticing novelties at the time this book was written. The main characters in The Great Gatsby who, by the way, all drive cars are Nick Carraway, Jay Gatsby, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker, and Myrtle and George Wilson. Attractive, yet enigmatic, Gatsby tries to win the love of an aristocratic woman, who rebuffs Gatsby for her upper class husband. This leads to Gatsby’s tragic murder after he is falsely accused of killing Myrtle with his Rolls Royce. The automobile, as
When Gatsby and Nick go out on the town Gatsby took his yellow Rolls Royce, which is a magnificent car. Gatsby wanted to impress Nick and everyone else in town with his awesome car. Once again this shows how Gatsby uses objects to get attention and not his personality.
Gatsby’s car and Gatsby’s clothes simply represent him and his lifestyle. His white flannel, silver shirt, and gold tie represent his wealth. It is always hard to keep flannel white. To keep it clean, it requires the number of laundry and it tells his wealth. The silver shirt and gold tie represent his wealth as well. Not many people can get silver shirt and gold tie by that time. His car is depicted as big yellow car. It is unusual to have a big car during the time period in this book. The car is also depicted shiny car which tells us his wealth to clean up periodically.
Fitzgerald uses the image of the polo ponies to describe Tom’s wealth. Polo is the sport of the upper-class. The fact that Tom owns a string of polo ponies is decadent. Only the extremely rich can afford such a luxury. In contrast, Gatsby earns his money through organized crime and illegal operations. When depicting Gatsby’s wealth, Fitzgerald says, “On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains.” (Fitzgerald, 41). Fitzgerald utilizes the image of Gatsby’s flashy Rolls-Royce as a bus to shuttle his party guests, as a way to demonstrate Gatsby’s need to show off his fortune. In addition, Fitzgerald uses a simile to compare Gatsby’s station wagon to a bug. He is intimating that the people attending Gatsby’s parties are infesting his home like parasites. They are leeches that use Gatsby and his lifestyle for their own advancement and pleasure. The reader is made aware of the shallowness of the people in Gatsby’s life when the only
The year 1925 landed in the middle of the roaring twenties. In the 1920’s, a lot of things happened such as the prohibition of alcohol, social change where more people lived in the cities, and the overall boom of wealth as the economy grew. This change in the lifestyle of the people sparked a decade of riches. Once accumulating every dollar after dollar, millionaires bought mansions to throw extravagant parties, galas and balls to impress the rich, the richer, and the richest. Not only did money play an important part of this era, but literature also had a significant and vital role. One of the numerous writers was F. Scott Fitzgerald. Wanting to capture the twenties in its midst, Fitzgerald wrote the literary classic, The Great Gatsby. The
Francis Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, is full of symbolism, which is portrayed by the houses and cars in an array of ways. One of the more important qualities of symbolism within The Great Gatsby is the way in which it is so completely incorporated into the plot and structure. Symbols, such as Gatsby's house and car, symbolize material wealth.
The book describes Gatsby's appearance and his manners as "...an elegant young roughneck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd." (Fitzgerald 53). His wealth is never covered up, from the mansion, to the huge weekly parties and the really expensive cars, It’s obvious that Gatsby’s wealth isn't like the wealth of the people from East egg . Gatsby is what seems to be the American dream in flesh. He's handsome, he's rich, and extremely popular and could have anything that his heart desires; or so you think. As the story goes on Fitzgerald exposes Gatsby's past and the many assumptions about his wealth including but not limited to, he killed a man, he’s the cousin of the kaiser or is actually a German spy. He has a rather shady ...
The Great Gatsby displays how the time of the 1920s brought people to believe that wealth and material goods were the most important things in life, and that separation of the social classes was a necessary need. Fitzgerald’s choice to expose the 1920s for the corrupt time that it really was is what makes him one of the greatest authors of his time, and has people still reading one of his greatest novels, The Great Gatsby, decades
Cars as a Symbol in The Great Gatsby Cars play a very important part in the telling of The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is a very dark, unhappy book, and the cars really. exemplify the need for this. " â€cars change their meaning and become a symbol of death" (Dexheimer, et al.). Cars also give the reader insight into some of the different characters in the book.
“When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.” This quote by Russel Baker perfectly exemplifies the meaning of cars in the novel The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Careless driving is a common symbol throughout the book representing the aloofness of the wealthy characters and their inability to establish control in their lives. The characters in this story are constantly “driving”, trying to convince the world that wealth is all that it’s cracked up to be. Cars are, in this situation, both the figurative and literal driving force of life. When the characters climb into the wrong seat of the car, they are surely headed for trouble By comparing those born into money and power and those that had to work for their status, Fitzgerald shows us the carelessness and the inability to establish control in life that comes along with predetermined wealth.
In the past century in America, one of the decades that has stood out most as a time of change is the 1920s. In a post-war economic boom, the decade was a time of cultural and societal change. Among the parties and the more relaxed way of life, Americans experienced new wealth and luxury. Capturing the essence of the Roaring Twenties is a daunting task, especially because of the many different factors contributing to the decade’s fame. However, F. Scott Fitzgerald managed to capture and define the spirit of the 1920s through his novel. In Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the characters and events of the novel manifest the trademark qualities of America in the 1920s.
In conclusion, The Great Gatsby reveals the carelessness and shallowness of the characters in the upper class. Society is totally corrupted and the character’s lives revolve around the money and extravagant lifestyles. All of the characters are surrounded with expensive and unnecessary itms, which in turn, dulls their dream of actual success. Scott F. Fitzgerald provides a powerful and everlasting message of a corrupt, materialistic society and the effects that it has on the idea of the American dream.
In the novel The Great Gatsby, the 1920’s was a “throwaway culture, in which things (and people) are used and then abandoned” (Evans). This is true of the lives of the wealthy elite who ruled the East and West Eggs, causing the domination of materialistic thought. The substitution of money for integrity ultimately provided a way for corruption to take deep roots in the characters. The frivolous lives and relationships described by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby depict the emptiness of the shallow 1920’s era.