Comparing Responsibility In The Great Gatsby And A Sweeter Place

People don’t like taking responsibility for their actions that have hurt others. The fear of how they will be perceived by others once they take responsibility for doing something bad holds them back from saying the truth. This is significant because taking responsibilities for your actions can help prevent problems that have unknowingly been negatively impacting the lives of others. Gatsby by Fitzgerald reveals the reasons and ways that the rich avoided responsibility in the 1920s. Similarly “A Sweeter Place” by Selena Gomez expresses her thoughts on avoiding responsibility as an average person in the 20th century. Both works of art convey that avoiding responsibility can result in making bad choices that can hurt you as well as others in

People such as Tom and Daisy believe that money can fix everything and there is no need to actively take action to fix what they caused. “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness… and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (Fitzgerald 210). Tom cheating on Daisy and Daisy cheating on Tom creates a mess of their relationship as well as Myrtle and Wilson’s. In the end, the turmoil causes Tom to be the cause for Myrtle’s death and he encourages the murder of Gatsby. Once all of this happens Tom and Daisy both retreat back into their wealth and go on vacation to escape their reality. The rich don’t have to face any consequences for their actions because they are able to disappear and use their money to avoid

Escaping from reality is a common way of coping when you make a mistake that affects your life negatively. In the song “A Sweeter Place”, Selena Gomez says, “Is there a place where I can hide away? Red lips, French-kiss my worries all away. There must be a sweeter place. We can sugarcoat the taste”. Hiding away and finding ways to distract yourself from your problems is how the majority of people avoid taking responsibility for their actions. Forcing themselves to not see the problems makes it easier to avoid responsibility to fix the problem that they caused and this can be detrimental to their mental state. This can be seen in Gatsby when Tom, Myrtle, and Gatsby party from day to night while doing stupid things without a care about the outside world. This comes back to the culture during the 1920s of getting lost in alcohol and parties to forget the realities of their lives. And once the party ends, they come back to the reality of life and realize that they don’t like it. This demonstrates how Tom doesn’t want to bring up Myrtle because he doesn’t want to take responsibility for cheating on Daisy with a lower class woman. Therefore, “A Sweeter Place” can be used to understand how the culture of the 1920s was facilitating the avoidance of responsibility through party culture as an escape from