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Examples Of Corruption In The Great Gatsby

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Thomas Jefferson, one of America’s founding fathers and the third president of U.S, proclaimed, “Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.” Jefferson implies that a person striving for the American Dream is only concerned about wealth and not about the methods he will take to achieve that wealth. That person is ready to go against his morals and take corrupt methods to achieve success. Those amoral methods include one becoming a “busy” man and avoiding spending time with his family, one becoming a drug dealer and owning drug stores, and one selecting wealthy partners. The idea of the American Dream causing a man to become “busy” is present in Adam Gopnik’s editorial, Bumping Into Mr. Ravioli. The impact of the American …show more content…

A person becomes corrupt when he looks for illegal ways to achieve success. Jay Gatsby is an example of a man who used unlawful ways to attain wealth. In The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan proclaims, “I found out what your ‘drug-stores’ were… He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn’t far wrong” (Fitzgerald 133). Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband and whom Gatsby abhors, announces that Gatsby is not truly an honorable man. Gatsby obtains his wealth through illegal alcohol business, and this character of Gatsby adds onto many other reasons why Gatsby is never going to be like those old money people of East Egg. Gatsby’s action of bootlegging shows the audience that his strong desire for the American Dream caused him to go against morality and become corrupt. Going against morality proved to be costly for Gatsby as he was still unsuccessful in achieving his main mission: Daisy. The pursuit of the American Dream once again shows its negative consequences. One who pursues wealth will become corrupt and go in the wrong

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1243 Words | 5 Pages

Gatsby almost craved wealth and respect. He was so desperate that he became a bootlegger to make large amounts of money considering he wasn’t born into wealth but, he really wanted that lifestyle. Tom said, “… I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn’t far from wrong.” (Fitzgerald 44) He said this because how does someone become that wealthy out of nowhere and isn’t “old money”.

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What is your background like? Did you grow up wealthy? Poor? In-between? Did you live in the suburbs or an apartment?

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350 Words | 2 Pages

In ‘The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald conveys the message that everyone has secrets and the ability to be dishonest, so a person can only really trust themselves. The first, and perhaps the example that stands out the most this, is Jay Gatsby’s alter ego: James Gatz. Gatz came from a poor family, and wanted to create a new identity to represent himself with. So, main character Nick Carraway says that Gatz “invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old would be likely to invent…” (Fitzgerald 98).

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599 Words | 3 Pages

F. Scott Fitzgerald accurately depicts dishonestly and hypocrisy within the upper class in his characterization of the West Eggers within “The Great Gatsby”.

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329 Words | 2 Pages

In the novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald all of the characters are immoral. Not one character in the novel show characteristics of a fully moral person. All characters show signs of immorality, but the most corrupt characters in the novel are Tom Buchanan, Jay Gatsby, and Daisy Buchanan. Tom Buchanan is the most corrupt character in the novel because he shows the most signs of immorality. He commits adultery by cheating on Daisy with Myrtle.

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744 Words | 3 Pages

A Failed Dream: How Inauthenticity Leads to an Empty Life Money is the root of all evil. While Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald is not necessarily and evil character, he loses part of himself in the desire for wealth as he attempts to attract the attention of Daisy Buchanan, a wealthy woman who married into a prestigious family. Gatsby is an inauthentic character because his shallow love of Daisy leads to a false sense of the reality of his relationship with her; thus he does not achieve the American Dream through his failure to achieve happiness along with his wealth Gatsby’s inauthenticity is rooted in how his love of Daisy is surface level and relies heavily on Daisy’s status in society showing how his

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1649 Words | 7 Pages

In The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald shows how society gets corrupted trying to achieve the American Dream through the characterization of many characters like Gatsby. Jay Gatsby was a man who rose from nothing to being extremely wealthy, many would consider him as someone who has reached the American Dream. However after so much work he never really got the one thing that made him happy. Many critiques like Fussel argues that Gatsby is corrupted by the values and attitudes he holds in common with the society that destroys him. Others like Callahan and Gunn believe that the Great Gatsby tries to convince people that money and success is everything but they failed in the end by showing how miserable Gatsby is without Daisy.

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686 Words | 3 Pages

‘I was in the drug business’(Fitzgerald 90). Doing anything illegal is considered immoral. Selling drugs is very illegal, as the substance being sold could kill people. “The only way Gatsby can be with Daisy is by building a social mystery around his identity and involving himself in illegal dealings” (Lehan 271). By getting rich, he has corrupted his morals.

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1865 Words | 8 Pages

Corruption of the American Dream Many people in this decade of our lives have their own version of the american dream. When being a kid and learning about the american dream, we think of a family in a nice house with kids and pets. We don’t know to truly think of what the american dream is for people. The Great Gatsby is great at telling what it was like back in the 1920s when people were finding their american dreams.

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703 Words | 3 Pages

In this book money is shown to cause corruption in Gatsby, Tom, and in relationships in the book. Corruption can occur in many types of ways weather it is in some ones position and status, in a relation causing destruction to the relation, also corruption can just cause a person to change be two faced. Gatsby is a character that is shown to be corrupt. In the book Gatsby tends to be distant from everyone and no one really knows who he is or where he came from therefore he has acquired

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1261 Words | 6 Pages

The novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a classic 20th century story -that period was also known as the “roaring twenties”- which critiques the vision of the American Dream people in general have. At that time, the idea of a free market, and industrial revolution provided the opportunity for many to seize the market and people were starting to see that they could become rich without having any type of restriction. New York city was the centre of this wealth-creating society. After the war, this movement generated new opportunities and ambitions for people wanting to start a wealthy upper class life. That period of time was all about alcohol, partying, gambling, fashion, and money.

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995 Words | 4 Pages

In the novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald characterizes the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values. One of the major themes explored in this novel is the Hollowness of the Upper Class. The entire book revolves around money including power and little love. Coincidentally the three main characters of the novel belong to the upper class and throughout the novel Fitzgerald shows how this characters have become corrupted and have lost their morality due to excess money and success and this has led them to change their perspective towards other people and they have been portrayed as short-sighted to what is important in life. First of all, we have the main character of this novel, Gatsby who won’t stop at nothing to become rich overnight in illegal dealings with mobsters such as Wolfsheim in order to conquer Daisy’s heart.”

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839 Words | 4 Pages

In The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald, one of the characters is “stuck in the past”. Throughout the novel, Gatsby is constantly longing for a past relationship he had with a woman named Daisy, who moved on from Gatsby and married another man when Gatsby left for the war. Gatsby’s view of the past is used to develop a major theme of the novel: the moral decay of society. The novel begins with Nick, the narrator saying how the events that happened in New York, where the novel takes place, caused him to leave, and how he doesn’t like any of the people he was involved with.

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1909 Words | 8 Pages

Then, we will see Daisy Buchanan’s moral corruption due to her wealthy upbringing. Lastly, Nick Carraway’s conversation with Tom will show how wealth has corrupted Tom’s morals in such a way that it leads him to rationalize his decisions and actions, believing that what he did was right. Wealth is the source of moral corruption within the characters in The Great Gatsby, wealth is the source of their actions and decisions, it is the reason for their warped sense of what is right and wrong. The first example of wealth

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1659 Words | 7 Pages

Characters throughout The Great Gatsby present themselves with mysterious and questionable morals. Affairs, dishonest morals, criminal professions, weak boundaries and hypocritical views are all examples of immorality portrayed in The Great Gatsby. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, lies and mischief fill the lives of many and significantly damage numerous relationships. First, Jay Gatsby's whole life is consumed into a massive lie. His personality traits set him apart from others and the attention he accumulates motivates him to falsely portray his life.

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