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How Does Jordan Baker Present The Decay In The Great Gatsby

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Jordan Baker’s Resemblance to the Roaring Twenties The 1920s were entitled the ‘Roaring Twenties’ for a reason. Known as the “God is dead” era, the morality of Americans decayed into cheap, meretricious ideas of fun. F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The Great Gatsby, tells the story of lost love and the long-sought-after American Dream. The characters reflect their settings, but especially the character of Jordan Baker. The Great Gatsby’s Jordan Baker reflects the moral decay of the Roaring Twenties by moving on too fast, party mentality, self-aware carelessness, and dishonesty.
Jordan Baker lives a fast-paced life, with a party mentality. When Daisy begins to feel morbid and philosophical about the summer and how she does not know how …show more content…

However, unlike many of the other characters in the novel, Jordan is self-aware of this. Jordan was very cold, and never very welcoming. When she did express herself, it was never quite warm. For example, Jordan “held [Nick’s] hand impersonally”(p42). She keeps herself at. Nick acknowledges her carelessness and warns Jordan, “Either you ought to be more careful or you oughtn’t to drive at all”(p58). To this, Jordan replies, “It takes two to make an accident”(p58). Jordan does not take on the blame for almost hitting a man with her car, she simply makes a quip and changes the subject. She does not truly care for the safety of anyone else. Though Jordan is careless, Nick states she was “too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age”, unlike Daisy (p135). Jordan is clearly wise enough to understand that she has lost any sense of care. It's her intention to close herself off emotionally and express no real empathy to others, even for issues that she caused. Carelessness goes hand-in-hand with the party mentality of the 1920s. All anyone wanted to do was have fun, no matter the cost. Also, hope was on the horizon, and thousands of people wished to chase the infamous ‘American Dream’. Chasing this dream often required stealing, cheating, or overall treating people unfairly in an attempt to reach the goal. This can be seen in Gatsby’s approach to amassing a large wealth. Essentially, most people in the

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