The Role Of Organized Crime In The Great Gatsby

822 Words4 Pages

In the 1920s, organized crime ran rampant throughout America's big cities and metropolitans, especially New York City. This is also demonstrated in Gatsby by the various characters. Throughout this era, crime boss ran rampant doing whatever they felt like and the social system was corrupt. Also in The Great Gatsby organized crime was shown through Gatsby party's were a lot of alcohol was dispersed and drank, and also many organized crime members were characters in the book. During the 1920s, and also shown throughout the book The Great Gatsby, organized crime was rampant with bootleggers controlling the flow of alcohol, crime bosses killing people in their way, and organized crime powers that control institutions.
One way that organized crime ran rampant through the 1920s is bootlegging, bootlegging was an illegal way of making alcohol because of the prohibition, which was a ban on all alcoholic beverages. In the 1920s, a major bootlegger and gangster was Al Capone ,others refer to him behind his back as "scar face", one of his main jobs was "The illegal sale of liquor, called bootlegging, became a growth industry, especially in urban areas such as Detroit, New York, and Chicago, where the …show more content…

Frank Costello was a major gang and mobster durning the 1920c and was notorious, "Because Costello’s Mafia niche was his skill with political influence, his friends counted on him to protect their illegal activities by bribing police, politicians, and judges"("frank Costello"). This is just one example of how mobsters had control of large and small institutions. In the Great Gatsby it shows how Meyer Wolfsheim, a gangster, had a big influence and "he's the man who fixed the World Series back in 1919 "(Fitzgerald 118). This shows how mobsters had control over certain institution and in Gatsby they had control over s baseball team so they could make a