Personal Wealth In The Great Gatsby

“It is good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good too, to check up once in awhile and make sure you haven't lost the things money can't buy” (George Horace Lorimer). This quote from George Horace Lorimer gives an example of how people should really be spending their lives, instead of some way people usually do. It is important to enjoy the things in life that money can’t buy, including friends, family, natural beauty, etc. It is important to recognize or a person will lose their sense of reality, and instead, focus only on themselves and their money. As seen in the criticism, McAdams argues that wealth classes makes everyone separate and shows readers that money really does rule the world. As shown in The Great Gatsby, a person’s wealth doesn't equate to a carefree, happy life as one might think, because quite simply, money doesn’t buy happiness.

There are many times where the readers see money and someone's personal wealth being brought up. The first topic we see being brought up in the story, is the idea of how someone's personal wealth and the wealth class that they consider themselves to be a part of, and McAdams brings this up a lot within his criticism. In Ethics in Gatsby, by Tony McAdams, he explores the many ideas within the book and gives his intake on them. One issue he talks about is the issue about the wealth classes and how people are discriminated because they are in a certain wealth class, while discussing this he says, “Fitzgerald himself, while drawn to the pleasures of high society, apparently was troubled by what he took to be the unfairness of a culture marked by great divisions of wealth” (McAdams 115). In this quote, we see the criticism McAdams has about Fitzgerald's work, as he puts the entire story into a new perspective for the readers, which is what Fitzgerald, the author of the book, thought about while