Since the beginning of time, people will do anything for money. They will also do anything to build relationships with wealthy people. In society, if you have money, you are automatically looked at as having high social status. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, each of the characters have their own way of either lying about how they got their money, or selfishly trying to build relationships so it makes them look better. These components are shown through Jay Gatsby, a walking sign of the death of the American dream, Myrtle Wilson, and Tom Buchanan’s lower-class mistress. The Great Gatsby is a book about the lingering end of the American dream and genuine love. Jay Gatsby, the protagonist in The Great Gatsby, is the perfect example …show more content…
Some of these rumors include that he was a German spy in the war, and that he killed a man. No one who attended Gatsby’s parties knew who he really was, but they wanted to go to them because there was free alcohol, and at the time it was illegal for people of all ages. The time period of The Great Gatsby, the 1920s, was called “The Roaring Twenties” because so many people rejected society’s rules, causing social change and a surge in the economy. Prohibition was the biggest problem in the 1920s because it made people want to drink even more, and they did. The death of the American Dream seemed to uproar back then, and it has never really gone down since then. The real reason why Gatsby got all of his money was by bootlegging, illegally distributing or buying illegal substances, but he was not going to tell people that. Instead, he states, “My family all died, and I came into a good deal of money” (Fitzgerald 51). Gatsby learned to act rich from a man named Dan Cody. He taught Gatsby to say things like “old sport” to make him sound wise and well-off. He loved to show off his wealth to everyone, but there was one person he wanted to please the most, Daisy