How Did Wealth And Social Class Affect The Great Gatsby

How Wealth and Social Class Affect Prohibition
“I found out what your ‘drug-stores’ were. He turned to us and spoke rapidly. “He and this Wolfsheim brought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That’s one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn't far wrong.” (Fitzgerald-Chapter 3) Prohibition was the legal prevention of the selling, manufacturing, and transportation of alcohol in the 1920s. While alcohol was illegal, people still found ways to still obtain it. The Great Gatsby shows how alcohol could still be obtained by wealth and social class. Under the Eighteenth Amendment, Prohibition illegalized alcohol. This led to the rise

During prohibition, the wealthy had a blind eye turned to them. They would pay off the law enforcement or ruin their reputation. Politicians were also corrupt and most of the time were involved in bootlegging as well. We see this is the Great Gatsby; all of Gatsby's wealth that came overnight was from prohibition created by the black market. This allowed Gatsby and his partners to create a large amount of money in a small amount of time. Bootlegging was another way Americans became wealthy in the 1920s, we see this in the case of Jay Gatsby. Gatsby got involved with a man named Wolfsheim, who was a well known bootlegger. He was the one who made Gatsby a fortune bootlegging illegal substances. Meyer Wolfsheim was also a prominent figure in organized crime. He was responsible for fixing the 1919 World series. Gatsby also had a name for himself that no one could deny. With his massive parties, beautiful house, and his way with words. As Churchwell explains in an article with History, “one of the many unintended consequences of Prohibition was that it created this accelerated upward social mobility. Fitzgerald is reflecting a preoccupation at the time that there were these upstarts- as they would have said-these nouveau riche people who came from dubious backgrounds and then suddenly had all this money that they were splashing around.” (Pruitt, S.

In an article in intelligencer magazine Kevin Rose says, “Let’s first start by examining Gatsby’s incoming cash flows. We are told that Gatsby came up from essentially nothing, and that the first time he met Daisy Buchanan, he was “a penniless young man.” His fortune, we are told, was the result of a bootlegging business. In the summer of 1922, when The Great Gatsby was set, Prohibition was only two and a half years old. The Volstead act, which officially prohibited the selling and manufacture of alcoholic drinks, was passed in late October, 1919. If we assume that Gatsby began selling liquor in Chicago several months after the Volstead Act’s passage (with a several-month lag to buy up drug stores and establish his business), that gives him roughly two years to have built up a fortune.” (Was the Great Gatsby Broke?-Intelligencer) With all of that to say, this shows that he would have plenty of time and money to build a name for himself. This led him to get away with prohibition. This let him rise to a new social status. In conclusion, prohibition had many effects on American society in the 1920s. People would go to every extreme to maintain their social states and build their wealth. They also used prohibition as a way to show their dominance over law enforcement and their society. During this time period law enforcement would turn a blind eye to the wealthy and people higher in society. We