The Great Gatsby Separation Of Social Class

Life is made up of social classes. Everyone is a part of them. Everyone wants to climb up the social ladder. Can everyone move up social classes? Is it possible to change one’s entire demeanor to fit that of a higher social class? As the great Albert Einstein once said, “The distinctions separating the social classes are false: in the last analysis they rest on force” (Picture). There are many different viewpoints relating to the difficulties of crossing society’s borders, many of which will be discussed and evaluated in the upcoming paragraphs.

One may believe that the only way to exterminate social prejudices is to ascend the social ladder. However, what many people fail to realize is what is needed in order to rise to a higher social class.

The Great Gatsby describes him as an honest man from an assumingly wealthy family, yet he himself is not wealthy. Instead, he is living among the wealthy, eating with them, and converses with them on a daily basis. Carraway, one would think, would be among the higher of the social classes, but, because he is an honest man, he chooses to distance himself from the disgusting, self-serving characteristics that he witnesses in his social superiors. He, unlike many others, notice that people who rose from the ashes have worlds more integrity than those that are seemingly first-class. “We shook hands and I started away. Just before I reached the hedge I remembered something and turned around. "They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together" (Fitzgerald

Social class is not depicted based on education, style, money, or acquaintances alone, but rather a combination of all four elements delicately stitched together. For instance, one might be wealthy, as Meyer Wolfsheim, but never be accepted as high class. “The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World's Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people – with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe” (Fitzgerald 73). Idolized in this section of the novel, Wolfsheim benefits from his wealth by using his resources to hide his criminal activity, yet because of how he obtained his wealth and his underground connections, he is shunned by the high class members of society. His scandal proves that he is, in some fashion, educated, but he has the wrong acquaintances which in turn, gives off the wrong impression and restricts him from becoming a member of the upper