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Changes In The Great Gatsby

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During the early 1920’s and up into the late 1940’s the United States experienced many different revolutions and changes due to the effects of WWI and WWII. One of the most significant issues of the period was the mass immigration of Europeans, more commonly from south and west Europe, to the United States in search of the “American Dream”. This American Dream was the idea that a person, or family, could come to America with nothing and reinvent themselves and work hard to make money and make it big in the “Land of the Free”. The new age of industry and the unique ideas and beliefs of the new immigrants and U.S. citizens pushed America into a drastic social change. This change affected many areas such as clothing, religion, education, press, …show more content…

Scott Fitzgerald pursued the condemnation of the wealthy. In his renowned novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald comes after the vanity and carelessness of some of the rich class, as they feel they are above society and have no consequential thought. To set up a basis and show his point, Fitzgerald uses the characters to claim that all people are equal, which is a false security he believed the U.S. relied on(Voegeli 2003). Yet throughout the book, the main character is shown that no one is equal and that while many people suffered in lower classes, the wealthy were able to live with entitlement. Fitzgerald is able to over dramatize the horrible and ugly minds of some of the upper class, like Tom and Daisy Buchanan, by using Jay Gatsby as an ideal man of the American Dream who works and strives for what he wants(Voegeli 2003). Fitzgerald uses Gatsby as a symbol of the American dream, that you can do whatever you work for in the country and lifts the American conscience up. Yet while showing what is great about the country and the idea of being able to climb the social ladder in America, Fitzgerald insults the privilege of the “old rich”, as they don’t know what they’re missing because they've been handed life. Fitzgerald states this in the book when Nick reminisces, “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone’, he told me, ‘just remember all the people in this world haven't had the advantages you have.”(Fitzgerald

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Fitzgerald critiques the wealthy Americans and the American Dream using characters and events from the novel. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald criticizes wealthy Americans by using characters like Tom Buchanan. Wealthy Americans in the 1920s had little regard for other Americans usually only caring much about themselves. “Normal” Americans created

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James Smith Bessette H English II 15 Mar 2023 Fitzgerald’s Condemnation of a Newly Avaricious America The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a perfect window into the values of the American people living in the Jazz Age of the 1920s. The frivolity of nearly every American person, rich or poor, is snapshotted in the novel. Fitzgerald chooses to highlight these characteristics for many reasons, namely to show his obvious disappointment in what America has become. He tells his story through the eyes of Nick, who watches his tiny world of East and West Egg crumble around him because of the scramble for money and social status.

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The Great Gatsby has been adapted as part of the literary canon due to it’s timeless theme and lessons. The theme of this novel being; if you believe that money (or any other material item) can buy love, then one will never receive sincere affection because true love has no equivalent to money. The most prominent lesson including the idea the novel portrays about finding/the loss of one’s identity in material items. This lesson is without a doubt timeless, it could be seen in the 1920s, and it can be seen now. Modern society places a large emphasis on material items (as does Gatsby in the novel).

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Fitzgerald talks about both ends of society and ties them together all in one during his writing of The Great Gatsby. Gatsby’s parties are claimed to be the best of the best. Hundreds of people attend all high class, to experience the extravagant commodities. As the high class appears to be living the American dream, Fitzgerald’s drives into the city, exposing the lowest of the classes: coal miners, mechanics, and the homeless. This is another way Fitzgerald uses his novel, The Great Gatsby to validate the differences between society in relation to class and wealth.

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