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Great gatsby and the effect of social class
Great gatsby and the effect of social class
Social class and the great gatsby
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Fitzgerald uses these characters to expose this life with their selfish actions. The first quote about wealth is in the beginning of the chapter 1, “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had. ” (Fitzgerald
The impact of socioeconomic status can be examined through a myriad of lenses. F. Scott Fitzgerald aims to show the relationship between socioeconomic status and power. Throughout The Great Gatsby, Tom’s character shows that socioeconomic status is equivalent to power within the novel. Tom puts great pride and emphasis on his socioeconomic status and wealth.
Not only does the amount of wealth affect social class, but the type of wealth also affects it. It even affects where people live and who people marry as seen with Gatsby and Daisy. The characters social standing affect who they interact and how they are perceived by others. Fitzgerald highlights the different class structures like “New rich” and “Old rich” and the impact of wealth on the people’s lives in those classes. He also shows the superficial nature of the characters and highlights the value placed on wealth.
In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald attacks the rich class in the book and talks about the classes between two different types of wealthy people and those who live in the valley of ashes. There are the people like Daisy, Tom, and Jordan that were born rich, which they had gotten their money from their family and they were called “old money”. The “old money” thought they were better than the “new money”. The “new money” were people wasn’t born with money, which they had to work or earn their money to have it. Gatsby was called “new money”.
Gatsby’s life reveals how the social class someone is born into is the one they are stuck in for the rest of their life. This social inequality between the two classes was something Gatsby was unaware of, and he kept pursuing his never-ending dream. Through Gatsby’s struggles, Fitzgerald demonstrates the difficulties of joining the old money class and the dangers of being too consumed in the pursuit of status and wealth . Moreover, it is also important to note the reasons why the people with old money decide not to allow people with new money to attain their
The rich look down on the poor, the old money looks down on new money, and the men look down on the women, even though all of the rich people lose their money in the stock market crash in 1930. Fitzgerald proves that there is really no reason we should put others down and separate people into a class system. Throughout the story there
Social class can make or break a person because of how inescapable it is in today's society and even back then in the Jazz age. The Great Gatsby is all about social class and its benefits to the people who earned it through family and its issues to those who had to work hard for it as it's all about Gatsby and his dream to find Daisy, his past love. The divide of social class in The Great Gatsby is very prominent and one of the key factors of the novel as it shows us in depth dives into our characters and their ways of life during that time. Social class is the main divide in the novel and is very prominent in certain characters. F Scott Fitzgerald uses the characterization and relationships of Tom, Daisy, and Myrtle to show that social class
In the novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald characterizes the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values. One of the major themes explored in this novel is the Hollowness of the Upper Class. The entire book revolves around money including power and little love. Coincidentally the three main characters of the novel belong to the upper class and throughout the novel Fitzgerald shows how this characters have become corrupted and have lost their morality due to excess money and success and this has led them to change their perspective towards other people and they have been portrayed as short-sighted to what is important in life. First of all, we have the main character of this novel, Gatsby who won’t stop at nothing to become rich overnight in illegal dealings with mobsters such as Wolfsheim in order to conquer Daisy’s heart.”
Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby communicates his critical view of American society’s false dream and emphasizes the ignorant control wealth has over people. The novel punctuates the division between old and new money, and how the differences between people are solely based on their wealth's origination. The characters' actions and their attitudes towards others demonstrate the harming effects of wealth through moral decay and narcissism. All characters are harmed or affected because of the wealth that governs them. Gatsby died because he chased his wealth, which was Daisy, Myrtle died trying to obtain wealth through Tom, and Daisy was brought down to a person who only runs away from their problems because her wealth gave her that option.
The novel The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, takes place in the 1920s in New York City. In the novel, social and economic class are very prevalent, and cause many issues for the characters and their interactions with others. Overall the novel highlights how the character’s social class affects the morals, values, and characteristics of the upper class, through the treatment of others from different classes, the lives the characters live, and the decisions made Within the novel the class of a person impacts their treatment of others. Whether it be through words or actions, there is a very visible class divide not only from the description of the characters but how they interact with one another.
Through setting and motif, Fitzgerald addresses the old money’s inherent power over the working poor and new money. The novel’s use of setting to contrast between East Egg, West Egg, and the Valley of Ashes begins to explore the superiority of certain social classes. East Egg is where the most wealthy and aristocratic members of the nearby area live. It contains many “white palaces” (10) that are quite “fashionable” (10). This description paints an image of purity and untouched standards of wealth that are translated into the book’s time period.
Within the animal kingdom a pecking order exists known as the food chain; plants lie in the minimal levels of the chain whilst predators reign the top. However, animals are not the only predators, they share its dominion with man. Even though, man lies at the peak of the food chain he is not content; a another order has to exist, the social order. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby parades the idea of social classes, separating the cordial from the strident. Yet, he does not imply any favoritism toward the two despite their vast differences.
During the 1920s, America seemed to be a land of glamor and luxury. Underneath the beauty, however, was a vast underworld of crime: bootleggers and gangs ran rampant, controlling even members of the government. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, he tells a tale of that decade, which appears glamorous but is filled with corruption. The novel makes a naturalism argument about the impossibility of changing social class, revealing that only a facade of mobility can be achieved through debaucherous actions.
The American Dream is the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success, prosperity, and social mobility through hard work, determination, and initiative. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby attempts to achieve social mobility but ultimately fails due to the constructs of old vs new money. An argument is shown that the American Dream is just that, a dream, and that happiness cannot be achieved through wealth. In the novel, the super poor are stuck in their social class, unable to move because they live in the valley of ashes, which represents poverty and the corruption and social decay that came with the lavish and careless lifestyles of the rich.
In The Great Gatsby, social status is a significant element in the book as it separates the haves from the have nots. However more importantly, social status portrays the personalities of people belonging to different classes. In the end, you are stuck in the class you are born into, and attempting to change classes only leads to tragedy and heartbreak. In The Great Gatsby, there are three main social classes portrayed. These are old money, new money, and no money.
