American Prohibition and the Great Gatsby During the 1920’s, the 18th amendment was passed by congress making all sale and consumption of alcohol illegal. This gave many opportunities to create corruption, spark reckless behavior, and create major issues and changes on social life. Many of these issues and changes in culture were successfully captured in the book the Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby is filled with characters such as Jay Gatsby and Nick Caraway who have been lucky enough to become wealthy over the course of their young lives so therefore they can afford to throw marvelous parties every weekend. With these parties they supply lots of alcohol which leads to the corruption happening in the United States during the prohibition. In general, prohibition culture was very different than the typical modern day United States culture as for prohibition …show more content…
Al Capone is the most famous prohibition gangster of all time, who is known for running gangs that smuggled and bootlegged liquor. He used scare tactics, money, and his preexisting power to get to the top and control the illegal distribution of liquor in Chicago. Without the prohibition, men like Al Capone and in our case Jay Gatsby would have never gotten to the top for both these men were inspired by corruption. The prohibition changed American life as well. People had to love and fear the mafia; they loved the mafia because it was there only way to support their alcoholism, yet they feared the mafia because if you weren’t loyal or didn’t obey, let’s just say you were swimming with the fish that night. Though Gatsby did not go after people for not being loyal, his tactics of selling liquor were much more discreet which still caused for much corruption. The prohibition increased crime and corruption with bootlegging gangsters and men like Jay Gatsby, which overall changed American