Money Will Never End In The Great Gatsby

Bob Marley once said, “Money is numbers and numbers never end. If it takes money to buy happiness, your search will never end,” meaning that if you seek happiness through wealth you will never find it. In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrates the extravagance of the 1920s through both of Daisy Buchanan’s lovers: Jay Gatsby, a prosperous mansion owner who often throws ornate parties and Tom Buchanan, a flashy, young, polo player who inherited his wealth from generations before. Although the men appear to have it all, neither of the characters are satisfied with what they have. As Marley’s quote suggests, their search for happiness through money will never end. Despite the lavish lifestyle of the 1920s, money was a meaningless

“America whose ideals, noble in themselves, [is] becoming untenable, [and is] being corrupted, or crushed and cast out by a new culture progressively giving itself over to material, amoral pleasure (Haegert 97).” The prohibition laws that the US put into place backfired as people realized the profit they could earn by producing and selling alcohol. Instead of being driven by the idea that hard work would earn them the money they deserve, many Americans began to bootleg newly prohibited alcohol, smuggle drugs, gamble, and form gangs that participated in illegal activities and kept their actions secret. This became known as organized crime. The crime rate was exceedingly high in the roaring twenties due to the prohibition laws put in place after the war and people being so driven by wealth that they lost sight of their

In the Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan grew up wealthy and inherited all of his father 's money. This was another way that young men obtained money, through “hereditary wealth,” but it “endowed its possessors with negative traits… In fact, money earned without labour was an invitation to corruption (Lena 98).” Hereditary wealth, also known as old money, was also common in the 1920s as young men received inheritances as their elders died. This society viewed themselves as a higher class than the new money that obtained their wealth during their generation. Tom Buchanan’s character is used to demonstrate this as he inherited old money and is one of the wealthiest men in west egg, living extravagantly on money that he did not work