Theme Of Moral Decay In The Great Gatsby

1071 Words5 Pages

Jesus Parra
Smith
English 11-2/Period 6
8 March 2018
Road to Moral Decay
“If they couldn 't be bought they wouldn 't have the job.” This is an excellent quote made in the 1920’s by Al Capone, a very corrupt mobster who was living during the time period that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote his great novel, The Great Gatsby . This quote is important because it reveals how Jay Gatsby, a main character in the novel who used to be poor then gained great wealth ,but then lost all of this wealth just to get the help of a corrupt mayor to gain it back again. This shows how common government corruption in the 1920’s was. In the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the mayor and Mr.Gatsby are partners in a crime organization that they use to get rich. Al Capone was one of the greatest mobsters,and he deeply believed in materialism. He thought that politics at the time were very corrupt and he often got away with a lot by paying people to keep quiet or eliminating them. Like Jay Gatsby, he wasn’t always a criminal. He …show more content…

The theme of moral decay in the Great Gatsby reveals how people are willing to become criminals for money, power, and self gratification,