Social Classes In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

To be known as someone higher up in social class within America is a huge divide. In the novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the main character Jay Gatsby is driven by the power of money to raise his status within the social classes to impress Daisy. Gatsby’s obsession with money and his high ambition are what caused his downfall and led to him getting killed at the end of it all. The chase that Gatsby goes through to up his stats within a social class will hurt his relationships, his reputation, and himself. Despite Gatsby's ambition to chase his dream, he is not achieving what he has set out for. As a result, he is never accepted by the “old money” society. F. Scott Fitzgerald used Gatsby's failure to show the desire of obtaining

Jay Gatz grew up in the midwest in a poor family that never lived up to the standards he made for himself at a young age, “His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people- his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all” (Fitzgerald 98). Gatsby knew that with his family's past lingering around him that he would never be accepted as old money if people found out he did not come from a family line of money and that he built it all up himself. Gatsby was ignorant, even though his parents were working and supporting him growing up, all because they were poor he never wanted to accept them as his parents. Gatsby was never going to accept this lifestyle; he believed that “He was a son of God '' (Fitzgerald 98). Gatsby never faces reality and has a “Platonic conception of himself” which is defined as “free from experiences or material things” (Quora). This ideology that Gatsby created sets up his downfall because he never learns what is right, blinded by his ambition for money and wealth. Gatsby wanted to live a lavish lifestyle and be perceived as an affluent man. Working as a clammer on the shore, one day he noticed this glamorous yacht; he thought it would be his ticket out of being poor and to achieve the wealth he longed for. In the flashback, it

Much like Gatsby’s ambition to achieve his dream and live his American dream, it caused him to harm in his life and knocked him down. Just so Gatsby would be accepted in the “old money” social class he strained extraordinary measures which ended up getting him killed in the end. Gatsby’s ambition from a young age brought him to never learn what was right and brought him to make horrible decisions that lead up to his death. Throughout The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the story calls out the high selfishness and overly ambition that Gatsby had from the age of 17 until he died at age 32. Even though The Great Gatsby was written in 1920, the storyline is still relevant in the new age today. With the 2020 pandemic, there were multiple cases where people of a lower class were not getting the proper medical treatment that was required to live after contracting this illness. This group of people was singled out because they did not have enough money or they did not have insurance to get the necessary medical treatment that was vital for survival. Similar to how Gatsby was willing to do anything to bump up a class these people had to bump up a class to earn more money to get what they wanted at the