Theme Of Corruption In The Great Gatsby

One of the primary functions of literary expression is to communicate aspects of the human experience. Unfortunately, this experience often includes suffering. Such literature is especially powerful, since it essentially teaches the reader to understand the most profound elements of painful events or circumstances in one's life. The early years of the 20th century saw a series of almost unimaginable horrific events such as World War I, and the Great Depression. As is often the case, writers are affected by their own temporary history, so many writers of the period wrote about these especially devastating situations in their work. As such people look back on the first several decades of the 20th century and periodize it as part of literary movements

Scott Fitzgerald gives highlights of each individual character in the book and how there are many failures in the “American Dream”. This story creates a lot of disillusionment. The Great Gatsby can relate to the major corruption of so-called the American Dream; for the characters that were grieving over money, it was all about money and corruption. This story contains power, social status, wealth, affairs, love, and materialism. Fitzgerald goes deep into all of these to give examples of what people will do to get to where they want to be, how they are willing to lie, cheat and betray people they love for them to be successful.

In the book The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald makes an example out of Tom Buchanan to represent the ideal American Dream. Tom inherited vast wealth from his family. Growing up he was surrounded by money and a family who seemed to have it all together. Tom, a stereotypical athlete in college, had absolutely zero problems being friendly. The social aspect of Tom kept him heading in the right direction from what he was given in the first

Myrtle gives Tom nostalgic feelings of how his days were before when he was in football. Tom tries to take his life back by living a lot of lies with Myrtle. Overall she is a beautiful woman who is obsessed with the idea of living a high life of riches. Even though she wants to live out a life of royalty, she is also a very materialistic person who values it. Fitzgerald is very powerful when he uses Nick as an example to tell the reader that Tom is “forever seeking” an “irrecoverable football game". When he uses the word “seeking” it portrays how much pain Tom feels when it comes to catching his light again and to be better than before. In a sense, Tom is trying to gain validation from people, whether it's internally or externally. Tom abuses the fact that Myrtle gives him satisfaction. Myrtle is allowing Tom to feel a type of rash mischief when they are together. Tom gives a feeling, too, but more like the feeling he got from a college football game. The type of internal feelings Tom has are only a fraction of the joy he is missing. When describing this, Fitzgerald uses the word “irrecoverable” which is to explain that Tom will never be able to obtain the life he once had and will always be trying to chase unachievable goals. Tom uses the affairs as a type of an escape and numbness because it brings him excitement into the dull life he is