Great Gatsby Socioeconomic Landscape

In “The Great Gatsby”, F. Scott Fitzgerald focuses on the socioeconomic landscape of the 1920’s and the characters’ individual pursuit of “The American Dream”. In the 1920s, the United States went through a period of extreme social change. As the post-World War I economy boomed, mass consumerism changed the way people lived their lives and made manufactured goods available across the classes (Tomyn). The American Dream is the belief that anyone of any race, class, gender, or nationality can be successful in America if they work hard enough to achieve it. The main characters in this novel are Daisy, Gatsby, and Tom. Gatsby is in a lower social class than Daisy and Tom and his American Dream is also different from the other two. Gatsby’s differences

His situation of getting very rich and changing his social class connects to the socioeconomic landscape of the 1920's. In the 1920’s, the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. Eventually, only the middle class could change their social class while the lower class stays the same. Gatsby is an exception, he didn’t belong to the middle class, but he got rich and changed his social class. It's unknown of how Gatsby gets his wealth but he lives in the West Egg, the area of the new money or the area where the newly rich lives. Also, he is the most wealthy one in that area. His mansion shows his great wealth, "a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty

The American Dream is the idea that anyone of any race, class, gender, or nationality can be successful in if they work hard enough for it. Gatsby is someone on the lower economic or social class and works hard for the prosperity and wealth. With his hard work, he got the money, a car, a big house, and nice clothes and that shows that his American Dream of becoming rich was successful. That also shows that he changed his social class, but he wants to make Daisy his and get a higher status. Most people ,like Daisy and Tom, only have one dream and that is to have fun or have a peaceful, happy life. Eventually, Gatsby had another American Dream and took the shortcut to achieve his dream by approaching Daisy. Daisy was from an upper class and is very well known for her status and money. Also, Daisy was already married to Tom. Gatsby should have given up on that after Daisy was married to someone else. Gatsby wanted Daisy to belong to him and that will show that he is a higher class since marriage or relationships are mostly between same class people. With Daisy's class structure, he would also be known for his high status, but that reveals that he didn’t work hard for his dream. He took the shortcut by trying to separate Daisy from Tom and leads to the corruptions of him and Daisy. Daisy by accidently killed Myrtle and that caused Gatsby to know that he did something wrong, he should not approach Daisy.