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Effects Of The Great Gatsby

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Chasing Fairy Tales
The true effect of the American Dream and its effect on American society
13th of March 2023
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Tasman Bunkum
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Gatsby and his green light
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a sarcastic critique of America in the 1920s and its transition into a morally deficient culture that solely focused on the pursuit of wealth and power. It seeks to ask its audience whether the American Dream is actually real and challenge the belief that anyone can be successful through hard work alone. Alex Gibney’s documentary, 740 Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream is also a critique of America and its lack of morals concerning the divide between rich and poor but with the backdrop of the modern day.
Both The Great …show more content…

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” This quote from Nick is about the actions of Tom and Daisy directly leading to the deaths of Gatsby, Myrtle and George. This shows that in the 1920s if you had money in America there was a culture of the rich being able to get away with doing whatever they wanted because they could use their resources to get away with it. This leads the reader to believe that America in the 1920s was a morally corrupt place due to the ability of the rich to do whatever they …show more content…

Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby presents itself as a warning that centres itself around the themes of the American dream and wealth and power in New York in the 1920s. Similarly, Alex Gibney’s 740 Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, also focuses on these themes but with the backdrop of modern America and the effects of the Global Financial Crisis. Together these two pieces of literary work challenge our views on modern society as a meritocracy that allows the fluid motion of people between wealth classes, particularly upward movement through this system. Instead, they argue that the pursuit of wealth is pointless in a society that is controlled by the 1% of the 1% and that this only leads to moral decay and a shallow materialistic society. Whilst we may not be in America, we also face the same issues here in Australia in a capitalist, meritocracy and must heed the warnings of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Alex Gibney or we too will be doomed to societal decay and moral

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