Examples Of Old Money In The Great Gatsby

People say that money cannot buy happiness but those people have not experienced what it is like to be at the bottom and make it to the top having all the money one can obtain. Gatsby and Tom really show the difference between “old money” and “new money” throughout the novel and present us with what they can and cannot buy with their wealth. Money is one thing people desire to fulfill their materialistic wants. Gatsby’s gradual growth in his wealth and status will eventually bite back at him and be his downfall. The one thing we assume can make others happy is true love, but F. Scott Fitzgerald tells us otherwise in his novel The Great Gatsby. He shows us that what really matters is that money is everything. The novel tells us that there are

His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people–The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God — a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that — and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception, he was faithful to the end.” (76). Gatsby was shown to be poor hence he created this identity so that he could start a new life because he does not want his past to hold him down. He did not want any connection with his past because if anyone found out that he was poor his status would never be high and important. What money can buy is anything that is made and has no sentimental value but what cannot be bought is status, which has to be built up by yourself with no shortcuts. Depending on how you acquired it, wealth is represented in The Great Gatsby in one of two

In the early parts of the novel Myrtle married George not cause of love but instead, she says, “‘I married him because I thought he was a gentleman,’ she said finally. ‘I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe.”’(29). Myrtle married George because she thought he was a gentleman who can fulfill her desires on what she wants but he couldn't so she had an affair with Tom who can do all of that. She just wants to live a happy and comfortable life with the money she gets from Tom, Myrtle might not even love Tom but instead loves his money. Gatsby is also a victim of materialism and what he wants, he describes Daisy in a way that confirms it, “‘Her voice is full of money,’ he said suddenly. That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money — that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it... . high in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl…”(92). Daisy is described by Gatsby as a treasure or a prize to be claimed by him and explains why he lusts over her. Daisy is the goal or the dream Gatsby wants is what he wants to fulfill his desires and not waste his money silly like others. The whiff of wealth can change anyone’s actions or personality since they think they are greater than others and that they can get whatever they