Examples Of Marxism In The Great Gatsby

Marxist Critique of The Great Gatsby

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald grew up in an era of appearing successful corporations, industrial boom, and an increased focus on financial value over a person’s internal attributes. The radical economic shift from the early 1900s to the 1920s to capitalism altered the core, accepted societal beliefs in a major way, one that is very evident in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. As a man who suffered from a number of the negative effects of capitalism’s influence on human connection, F. Scott Fitzgerald reflected his personal experiences through his writing. Fitzgerald used The Great Gatsby as an outlet to express his hidden, personal frustration about his reality during the 1920s; therefore, each major character

In actuality, he was criticizing the way that they treated each other in the superficial jazz age, specifically as a reflection of the way that the people in his life treated him; furthermore, he was criticizing the conflicting feelings that he felt inside to meet a certain standard of wealth in order to succeed. Directly motivating Fitzgerald’s mixed emotions, the principles of Marxism claim this about the relationship between the bourgeois and the proletariat: “it has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade” (Marx & Engels 2). Marxist beliefs explain how the source of all human connection branches from the dependency on the need for financial power, a major idea expressed throughout The Great Gatsby as well as in Fitzgerald’s life. As Fitzgerald lived a moderate, comfortable life, he was not necessarily the richest man. That shortcoming affected the way he saw himself since capitalism of the 1920s demanded more of him than living off of his mother’s inheritance. The standards of the American Dream for the average man told him that he had to work diligently to accumulate wealth to marry a girl that he could properly provide for and only them would he live happily ever after in a financially dominated home. This

Fitzgerald expressed his simultaneous judgement and curiosity of the upper class through Nick. As an outsider like Carraway, who deep down wanted to pursue writing, but had to work other jobs to pay the bills, Fitzgerald understood the compromise it took to be among the aristocrats of society (Biography.com Editors 1). Both men came from average financial backgrounds away from the industry of the city and were generally a little clueless about the inner workings of the upper echelon of New York. At first, Fitzgerald, much like Nick, saw the world of money as opportunity, specifically for publishing Fitzgerald’s novels. It wasn’t until both Carraway and Fitzgerald were taken aback by the lack of sincerity and increase of secrecy in the world of the bourgeois did they realize that capitalism and its social expectations were flawed. As Nick says and Fitzgerald writes about the real people behind Daisy and