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Can Social Class Be Changed In The Great Gatsby

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Can social class be changed.? The novel, The Great Gatsby, coquets this question. When this inquiry is argued, two main stances tend to arise. In one instance, changing social class is said to be an attainable goal; however, in opposition to that argument, the correct stance to take on this states that social class, at least as it pertains to this novel, is an immutable part of all peoples lives. The opposing platform believes social class can be changed based on the assumption that anyone could do anything if they work hard enough. They mean to say that social class is based solely on wealth. Apparently, if you have enough money, anyone will accept you into their clique. To the other side, money can buy people's’ feelings and erase social
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In James W. Loewen’s “The Land of Opportunity,” he states that social class affects the way children are raised. He discusses the inequality in today’s society and how the textbooks in high school do not give any social class information. The students in today’s time are not taught everything they should be taught. He states that your family’s wealth is what makes up your future. Loewen discusses that people with more money can study for the SATs more productively and get a better score than someone who has less money.

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Myrtle Wilson shows that the American dream of changing social class cannot be achieved by cheating the social ladder through the use of associating oneself with a higher up person. First is that Myrtle, unlike Tom and daisy, was never born into great wealth or fortune. Instead she was born into the middle class world of blue collar workers and visions of getting ahead in life. In the story, it is shown that Myrtle lives in the valley of ashes which Nick describes as “a desolate area of land” (p.21) as well as a “solem dumping ground” (p. 21). Because Myrtle has never achieved a high social status, she does not know quite how to reach it.

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The Roaring Twenties, known as the decade of the 1920s in the Western World, consists of dramatic changes in social values. The cultural differences between the 1920s and the Victorian era changes people's behavior, where they become more free-will, youthful and carefree, despite of being more conservative before. People are more open-minded and found satisfaction through the “open pursuit of sex, money, and booze” (Berman 53) as they suggest their wealth and status in the society. New York City had become one of the cities where materialistic wealth has become the key of happiness and the standard to judge people's success, further leading Americans to pursue each other in a negative, acquisitive way. Through the different scenes and characters of the famous novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald explores how the society twisted the original idea of

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280 Words | 2 Pages

The “upper classes lack of integrity” is one of the prominent themes in the novel, which is about differences in the social classes, such as Upper Class vs Lower Class. The Great Gatsby shows the developing class rivalry between “old money” and “new money” just like Gatsby and Tom. Economic classes is called new money that is about upper class that has more money and more wealthy. Gatsby is in new money. Gatsby who represented everything.

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792 Words | 4 Pages

The impact of socioeconomic status can be examined through a myriad of lenses. F. Scott Fitzgerald aims to show the relationship between socioeconomic status and power. Throughout The Great Gatsby, Tom’s character shows that socioeconomic status is equivalent to power within the novel. Tom puts great pride and emphasis on his socioeconomic status and wealth.

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621 Words | 3 Pages

In the Great Gatsby, privilege comes into play. Privilege in this context means being born with advantages that you did not earn or work for. Some people have to work to get their money but others are born with money which means that they didn’t have to work for their money. Gatsby for example was not born with money. He had to make his own money by selling and dealing drugs and is now a very wealthy man.

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471 Words | 2 Pages

People are destined to be ranked into a social class. Social class is something, which one is born into, and this class cannot be changed. These classes begin with the low, middle, and high classes. Each class has different tiers, such as upper middle class or lower middle class. One might argue that the acquirement of wealth can change one’s social class, or that a person can learn to live like the class above them.

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In the Great Gatsby a big theme is social class. Social class was a big theme in the Great Gatsby because it reflected the social and cultural value of the 1920 era. This novel demonstrated a good example of the wealthy and the working class. The wealthy are the people who inherited money from their family and the working class are the average people who still have to work to pay the rent. In the novel the Great Gatsby the characters are divided by their social class.

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586 Words | 3 Pages

When talking about social class the sub theme that is also brought up is reputation, and how reputation can differ depending on your social class. For example Thomas Putnam states that “We vote by name in this society, not by acreage.” The second point that will be brought up in

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578 Words | 3 Pages

The American Dream is the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success, prosperity, and social mobility through hard work, determination, and initiative. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby attempts to achieve social mobility but ultimately fails due to the constructs of old vs new money. An argument is shown that the American Dream is just that, a dream, and that happiness cannot be achieved through wealth. In the novel, the super poor are stuck in their social class, unable to move because they live in the valley of ashes, which represents poverty and the corruption and social decay that came with the lavish and careless lifestyles of the rich.

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"Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone… just remember that all the people in this world haven 't had the advantages that you 've had". From the very first page of his most popular work, The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald sets for a very straightforward idea; whatever your social status is, there is more to a person besides the money on their pocket. Social status is a prominent factor in Fitzgerald`s work, extravagant parties and an expensive lifestyle are characteristics that characters in his stories pose, and this factor contributes the plot of the stories gratefully. This might be because of setting, most of Fitzgerald 's stories, like The Great Gatsby and Winter Dreams; take place in the roaring twenties. During this time, America became an "urban society"; people like Jay Gatsby, the main character of The Great Gatsby, and Dexter Green from Winter Dreams, moved from small towns to big cities.

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537 Words | 3 Pages

In The Great Gatsby, social status is a significant element in the book as it separates the haves from the have nots. However more importantly, social status portrays the personalities of people belonging to different classes. In the end, you are stuck in the class you are born into, and attempting to change classes only leads to tragedy and heartbreak.     In The Great Gatsby, there are three main social classes portrayed. These are old money, new money, and no money.

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619 Words | 3 Pages

In the 1920’s, social classes were divided with a large gap. The poor wanted nothing to do with the rich, and the rich wanted even less to do with the poor. In the novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, he uses the class structure in the 1920’s to redefine poverty. While the rich people in the novel are material rich, they are still “poor” socially and psychologically. Poverty is shown in a differently in this book than other books being written in this time era, and in doing this, it shows the rich what they are, and how they treat others from a different perspective.

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For example in the book, *The Great Gatsby, by *Scott Fitzgerald, depicts how these inequalities happen through its main character Gatsby. Throughout the 1920's people focused on getting rich instead of striving for equality as shown in The Great Gatsby, by Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald shows that people are yet not treated fairly and that social discrimination still exists. For example, in Chapter 2, Tom goes to see Wilson, a poor mechanic worker. He tells him he is going to sell him his old car, but his purpose is to distract Wilson so he can have an affair with his(wilson's) wife, Myrtle.

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1705 Words | 7 Pages

Introduction In the Caribbean, each territory has a unique social stratification systems which have been developed over the past centuries. This encouraged the people of these many cultures within the region to advance their social status - or his/her ‘social well-being,’ and the status of their family through the movement of social mobility. In this paper, it is my contention that social mobility is possible in the Caribbean since it allows persons to move in the social stratification system; secondly – to briefly address the current situation of social mobility within the Caribbean region, specifically in the countries of Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Guyana. And finally, that social mobility has shaped better opportunities in the Caribbean.

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