ipl-logo

Theme Of Wealth In The Great Gatsby

1397 Words6 Pages

How does F. Scott Fitzgerald’s depiction of wealth in the novel The Great Gatsby critique the social implications and problems of being wealthy? Critiques of the Upper Class based on Implications of Wealth The characterization of wealth has been one of prestige and elegance throughout human history. This group seems so foreign to the common people that it’s hard to begin understanding the social constructs of their lives. Yet as Nick Carraway notes, looking out at the vast amount of elites between East and West egg, a “more interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size” (Fitzgerald 9). The two islands represented a physical divide between the generations of wealth, two groups of people with contradicting …show more content…

Dan Cody, Gatsby’s former mentor, was ultimately brought down by those around him who envied and took advantage of the money he had. One woman in particular, Ella Kaye, was able to “[play] Madame de Maintenon on to his weakness, and send him to sea in a yacht”, and after following several legal expenditures, she stripped Cody of all his money, leaving none behind for Gatsby (Fitzgerald 64). Even with such experiences in his past, Gatsby would, later on, use similar manipulation on many others. For instance, in one of Nick’s first interactions with Gatsby, he makes a snide comment about Nick’s income and invites him to join his “little business” (Fitzgerald 53). Not only was this passively discriminatory, but it also implies the intentions of Gatsby to manipulate and profit off of Nick’s desperation for money. Later when Tom figured out the truth about Gatsby’s origin of income and insulted him for threatening Walter Chase to take the fall for him, Gatsby dismissed the comment and justified the action as he was simply helping him. “‘He came to us dead broke. He was very glad to pick up some money, old sport’” (Fitzgerald 83). If Nick had not declined Gatsby’s offer, it’s not unlikely that he would have been tossed out by Gatsby in a similar way as soon as he was of no use to him. Additionally, Tom showed much more blatant ideals of criticism and discrimination towards the lower class. One of which is the relationship with Myrtle, his mistress, in which he mentions his lack of concern to Nick about Wilson because of his economic status, inferring that he won’t affect his life. Tom purposely used the excuse that Wilson wasn’t providing for her as well as he should have and that his relationship with her is mutually beneficial. Yet, even with his close relationship with Myrtle, Tom considers it disrespectful for

Show More
Related
1317 Words | 6 Pages

The negatively displayed aspects of the wealthy elites in The Great Gatsby presents Fitzgerald’s view of how money

Read More
803 Words | 4 Pages

He says, “I’ll tell you god’s truth. I am the son of some wealthy people in the middle west- all dead now” (citation). Gatsby claims on “God's Truth” about his authenticity, but later in the book Gatsby’s friends reveal his real means of making money. Instead of taking money from relatives, he earns money through a chain of drug stores that bootleg illegal alcohol, explained by Tom, "He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter” (citation). Gatsby lying to Nick about how he earned his money became a major point of dishonesty among him and Nick, and lead to Nick’s unsure feelings on who Gatsby really is as a person.

Read More
456 Words | 2 Pages

Tom being with Myrtle was wrong on so many levels because Tom was cheating on his wife and Myrtle was cheating on her husband. When Tom and Nick went into the city with Myrtle both Nick and Tom were immoral. Nick didn’t seem to care that Tom was cheating on his cousin Daisy. When Myrtle was yelling out Daisy’s name, with much anger, Tom broke he nose in order to shut her up. Tom often showed signs of rage and violence.

Read More
840 Words | 4 Pages

Nick later went to Tom’s apartment and “Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing in impassioned voices whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy’s name … ‘I’ll say it whenever I want to! … Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand” (Fitzgerald 37). In this example, Tom and Myrtle are fighting. While neither of them has empathy towards the other it is clear that Tom has less. Tom has led her to believe that he will break up with Daisy and that she is something of the past.

Read More
465 Words | 2 Pages

‘The Great Gatsby’ is a book by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is narrated by a man named Nick Carraway who paints himself as the author of the book. He starts this chapter by telling us about the wise words his father once shared with him: “‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had. ’”(Fitzgerald 3). As a result, Nick is prone to keeping any assumptions to himself.

Read More
621 Words | 3 Pages

The fact that Daisy and Tom reside in the affluent East Egg neighborhood while the Wilsons reside in the less prosperous Valley of Ashes area helps to illustrate why the wealthy can purchase many expensive items while the less fortunate cannot. For instance, Nick explains that the homes on East Egg are White Palaces, “Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg

Read More
1474 Words | 6 Pages

Gatsby’s belief in the American Dream is so sound that he tries to pull Nick into pursuing it by offering him an opportunity to make money by illegal means. When presented with the opportunity, Nick reflected on this offer: “I realize now that under different circumstances that conversation might have been one of the crises of my life. But, because the offer was obviously and tactlessly for a service to be rendered, I had no choice except to cut him off there”. This quote shows a lot about Nick’s personality and values. While he is definitely tempted by the offer of making easy money, Nick’s morals overpower his desires.

Read More
800 Words | 4 Pages

“They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together…” (179). F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays the overwhelming of wealth and the sense of higher social status through many character relationships in The Great Gatsby. Jay Gatsby represents the wealthiest man in Long Island, who fell in love with the more affluent, Daisy Buchanan. Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband, also depicts a wealthy man, but less classy as he has an affair with the unprosperous Myrtle Wilson, George Wilson’s wife. “Money is the root of all evil.”

Read More
792 Words | 4 Pages

While talking about her relationship with her husband, Myrtle says, “The only crazy I was when I married [Wilson]” (Fitzgerald 35). Though Myrtle is talking about her husband, Wilson, her comment also reveals an important dynamic of the relationship between Tom and Myrtle. Myrtle reveals that she regrets marrying her husband because he had little money. This regret shows itself through the relationship between Tom and Myrtle. Tom, a wealthier man, holds a greater status and power than Wilson, a poorer man.

Read More
747 Words | 3 Pages

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby describes the life of Jay Gatsby in the 1920’s. The novel shares his love story and his loneliness. A major question the author raises is how does wealth impact class structure and society? Fitzgerald answers this question through the distinction between “New rich” and “Old rich” and the significance of East and West Egg.

Read More
2065 Words | 9 Pages

The Connection of Wealth and Personality in Fitzgerald’s Works In our society, money is seen as the most important factor in decision making and in our overall lives. This is shown throughout all of Fitzgerald’s works and in many of his characters. His stories continually mention the effect that money has on the community. In one of her criticisms, Mary Jo Tate explains that “[Fitzgerald] was not a simple worshiper of wealth or the wealthy, but rather he valued wealth for the freedom and possibilities it provided, and he criticized the rich primarily for wasting those opportunities.

Read More
1057 Words | 5 Pages

In society, the wealthy seem to live in a different world as the majority of people do not interact with them. Although there is little interaction between the middle and upper class, the middle class often deal with results or by products of the wealthy’s lifestyle and actions. Over the course of history, the middle class has come to accept this and expect this of the rich. The narrator of The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway, recalls events from his life revolving around his interactions with the upper class in the 1920s. He describes their actions, and he characterizes them as greedy and self-centered.

Read More
900 Words | 4 Pages

He appears to be a rather shady (but careful and well mannered) individual, hiding from his own parties and tending to be the subject of gossip among guests. Nick finds him to be somewhat awkward, in fact. He wonders how a man could just “drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island Sound”(54). Of course, he does not know at the time Gatsby’s backstory, his connection with Daisy, or how he came into his money. Eventually he learns the truth behind Gatsby and his foggy past, and comes to the conclusion that while his methods were not entirely moral, Gatsby had the purest intentions of anyone he knew.

Read More
938 Words | 4 Pages

American novel deals in depth with the theme of Greed as an aspect of human conscience crisis which leads to dilemma, problems, and predicament for human being. Novels such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth, Henry James’s Washington Square , Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Michael Crichton’s The Great Train Robbery, and others expose clear image for the theme of Greed and its implications. F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays the human predicament of Americans in 1920s, through his best novel The Great Gatsby . In this novel Fitzgerald deals with the theme of a lust for money and greed .

Read More
619 Words | 3 Pages

In the 1920’s, social classes were divided with a large gap. The poor wanted nothing to do with the rich, and the rich wanted even less to do with the poor. In the novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, he uses the class structure in the 1920’s to redefine poverty. While the rich people in the novel are material rich, they are still “poor” socially and psychologically. Poverty is shown in a differently in this book than other books being written in this time era, and in doing this, it shows the rich what they are, and how they treat others from a different perspective.

Read More

More about Theme Of Wealth In The Great Gatsby

Related Topics

Open Document