How Does Heathcliff Use Money In The Great Gatsby

In both Wuthering Heights and The Great Gatsby money represents more then just wealth. Money represents power, social status, love, control, material, and even life for the characters of these stories. For example, Heathcliff goes to chase his own fortune after the love of his life, Catherine, rejects him for his lack of wealth and “social status”. Jay Gatsby chases the “American Dream” after he falls in love with Daisy and throws massive parties to get her attention. Both of these men use their wealth to not only win the love of these women, but also to use their money’s power to control the situation that they are both in. However, even though money plays a large role in each of these stories, the money that both Heathcliff and Jay Gatsby

In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is driven by his lack of “social class” to go and seek out his own fame and fortune to gain it back. Heathcliff does this because he was rejected by the love of his life, Catherine, who turned him for not having “social status” and chose another man, Edger. Edger had money and social status. This Idea can also be clearly seen in The Great Gatsby. Jay Gatsby is driven to obtain the “American Dream” because he wants to be with Daisy but lacks the wealth and social class to be with her. Daisy is with another man, but this man, Tom, is so intertwined in his old money, he fails to see Daisy cheating on him, while he cheats on her. Both of these men are driven by money and what it can do for them. Money brings them love and social class, both of which were unobtainable to them before. Money also brings anguish and pain to the owner if it is not used

Jay Gatsby did not always have the high “social class” that Daisy has had with her old money. He was born to an extremely poor Germen American farming family in the 1890s. Jay Gatz despised the limits of poverty. He dropped out St. Olaf College in Minnesota only a few weeks into his first semester because he was "dismayed at its ferocious indifference to the drums of his destiny" and (as he later explains to narrator Nick Carraway) he could not bear working as a janitor to support himself through college any longer. After dropping out, he went to Lake Superior, where he met Dan Cody, a copper tycoon, in Little Girl Bay. Dan Cody became Gatz's mentor and invited him to join his ten-year yacht trek. At seventeen, Gatz changed his name to Jay Gatsby and, over the next five years, learned the ways of the wealthy. Cody left Gatsby $25,000 in his will, but after his death, Cody's mistress cheated Gatsby out of the inheritance Furthering his desire to become