Examples Of Corruption In The Great Gatsby

The Roaring Twenties, jazz music, flappers, automobiles, radios, the telephone, prosperity, modernism and cultural growth, a great decade with great accomplishments. Or so we think. Having lived during this time F. Scott Fitzgerald is able to critically write about the corruption of this time. The Great Gatsby, one of the many novels written by Fitzgerald is a story about love, deception, power, class, greed, and The American Dream. Set in 1920s New York City, the novel is told through the lens of a Miswesterner named Nick Carroway. Nick moves to New York City and meets a mysterious, and enormously wealthy man named Jay Gatsby. Nick becomes fascinated with Gatsby and the lifestyle he leads. Eventually Nick learns that Gatsby has a history with

For example, after discovering Daisy’s husband, Tom Buckanan had a mistress, Nick's ignorance strongly influences his actions. He shamelessly thought, “Though I was curious to see her, I had no desire to meet her” (24). Even if he had no desire to meet her, his morals should have been persuading him to stand up against the wrongness of the situation. Throughout the chapter he neither stood up to Tom nor told Daisy about her husband's wrongdoings. Although Nick acts with his ignorance in the beginning of the book, he learns and sees all the disillusions that Gatsby experiences along with how those disillusions cause society to act. Inversely, Gatsby becomes more ignorant and unaware of the disillusion that the Buckanans represent. After Gatsby and Daisy’s first meeting after 5 years, Gatsby shared his concern and sadness towards Daisy’s reaction to all of his new wealth. Gatsby claims that “‘She didn’t like it,’ he insisted. ‘She didn’t have a good time.’ … He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: ‘I never loved you.’ After she had obliterated four years with that sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken” (109). This quote highlights how Gatsby realizes that Daisy hasn’t loved him and only him all those years yet he continues to pursue her. He doesn’t and refuses to believe that she doesn’t feel completely the

After Daisy hits and kills Myrtle, Nick is walking back to catch a cab when she sees Gatsby hiding by the bush looking after Daisy in her yard. Similarly to the beginning, Nick leaves Gatsby as he is yearning for Daisy. Fitzgerald writes, “So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight - watching over nothing” (145). This is a significant parallel event because similar to the beginning Gatsby is left watching his dream or a symbol of his dream but only this time his dream is gone. There is no hope left that Daisy will leave Tom and run off with him. Fitzgerald portrays through Gatsby how people tend to become blinded by symbols or illusions that they make up and believe in that ultimately limit their view on reality and what is untrue. In hopes that Gatsby learned something prior to his death, Nick touches on how he thinks Gatsby’s last thoughts went, “”he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass” (161). Nick hoped that, left with nothing, Gatsby realized how he was blinded by his yearning for the love of this life. He had spent 5 years building his wealth in a negative way just for him to be left with nothing. His beautiful flower, his Daisy, placed wealth and status ahead of love when Gatsby did not and he blindly continued to attain her. Gatsby was deceived