Effects Of Wealth In The Great Gatsby

Wealth changes a person , whether the money is made yourself vs if you got money passed down, can make you very different. This is going to be shown in this essay by the characters Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby, from the book “The Great Gatsby” by F.Scott Fitzgerald.

The idea of how wealth can Change you is about how if you were born into it, you can become disconnected with regular life and become a very ungrounded unhappy person. However, if you make your own wealth you still have goals and experiences that keep you grounded. The effects of inherited wealth, felt mostly with two characters, Tom buchannon, and Daisy buchannon. They are the two characters in the book that are born into their wealth. In the beginning of the book when the

This is shown mainly in this book by the character Gatsby. When Nick is reflecting at the end of the book he says “if personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life”. This quote shows that Gatsby, like some people born into wealth, still had class and he is indeed similar. However he is more grounded to reality due to his upbringing being one that isn’t of wealth. Gatsby also had goals of his own, the main one shown in the book is his longing for Daisy buchannon, as they had a relationship earlier in life and he still wanted her. Again Nick says this about Gatsby when reflecting after Gatsby's death,”romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and such it is not likely I shall ever find again.”. This yet again shows Gatsby's goal to get daisy. This is because he truly longs for something. And Gatsby has goals in his life that being the main one whereas Tom has little to no goals due to his wealth letting him do whatever

Gatsby is one of the main characters in the book that is not only wealthy but has a ton of drive for his goal, to get daisy. As stated earlier, this could be because they grew up poor, this is shown in the text when Nick gave us some background on gatsby in roughly the middle of the book. It states “ his parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people-“. We have reason to believe that Gatsby is so driven and grounded in his life is because he was born poor. Thus allowed him to get a sense of “normalcy” before he built his own money from the ground up. As stated earlier, gatsby has great drive in his want to get daisy, something that may not be exactly true for daisys husband Tom. It can be believed that Tom due to his up bringing just believes that he owns everything, and once he has it, it won’t go away. When gatsby is talking to Nick after they get to know each other he once again shows that undeniable drive to get daisy. Gatsby states “And what's more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time.” Gatsby basically says that he does go off on stupid tangents in life but he always remained true to his one goal, to get daisy. But this also shows the fact that he is grounded by the way he always returns to his one goal, whereas someone