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The Great Gatsby Influence On Society

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby represents the everlasting disconnect that happens with every generation. With every new generation, the one prior seems to lose faith or the ability to sympathize with and understand their younger predecessors. The Great Gatsby is a perfect model of this divide. In the novella, we are introduced to characters who embody the traits imposed onto younger people to the extreme making most characters little more than caricatures. The narrator Nick Caraway, acts as a mouthpiece for Fitzgerald, often making comments about the disparity of the world and the supposed crumbling of society: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or …show more content…

“We can assert with some confidence that our own period is one of decline; that the standards of culture are lower than they were fifty years ago; and that the evidences of this decline are visible in every department of human activity.” (T.S Elliot 91) a quote from 1948 further illustrating the older generation’s fear and anxiety about the evolving moral values and superficiality seen in younger adults. The Great Gatsby conveys an anti-pleasure message; Fitzgerald himself fell into his category of the artificial lives he bashed in his book, “he and Zelda liked to spend lots of it fast, usually for impermanent things: not for real estate, fine motorcars, or furniture, but for traveling expenses, the rent of furnished houses, the wages of nurses and servants; for parties, party dresses, and feather fans of five colors. Zelda was as proudly careless about money as an eighteenth-century nobleman’s heir.” (Cowley). Furthermore, the Great Gatsby stands as a representation of human nature and reflects many of the criticisms humans have with each passing generation, including those we have

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