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What Does The Great Gatsby Represent America

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Why The Great Gatsby is Not the Great American Novel

Have you ever wondered what the greatest book of all time is? Or maybe more specifically, what book best represents America? This is a subject of much debate among scholars. Many books are argued to be the Great American Novel, such as Moby-Dick, To Kill a Mocking, Gone with the Wind, and The Grapes of Wrath. One such novel is the subject of much controversy in this issue, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many people believe this book to be the Great American Novel. However, The Great Gatsby is not the Great American Novel because it does not represent all of America’s minorities.

The first major group excluded by the Great Gatsby, the so-called ‘Great American Novel, is people …show more content…

The book portrays women as corrupt, manipulative, and inferior. There are three main female characters in the book, Daisy, Jordan, and Myrthe. Daisy is portrayed as powerless in her own destiny. She says to Nick that she hopes her daughter will be a “beautiful little fool” because she believes that that is the best thing a girl can be in this world, and can’t run away with Gatsby because she is tied down to Tom, who won’t let her go. She is also portrayed to be unfaithful, easily wooed away from Tom by the handsome face of a past lover with a beautiful mansion and lots of money. Jordan is shown as the typical rich female stereotype, gossipy and aloof. She is shown to be extremely interested in the gossip of Tom’s affair and spreads it around with reckless abandon, even attempting to eavesdrop on a conversation about the matter between Daisy and Tom. She often puts snide comments into conversation as well, such as when she said “You mean to say you don’t know? Why, I thought everybody knew.” to Nick when he told her didn’t know about Tom’s affair with Myrtle. Myrtle is portrayed as the unfaithful golddigger, the cheating wife looking for money. She is always shown to be attempting to act and dress as the rich people do because that’s what she wants, to be rich off of Tom and to live the life the rich people lived in the great roaring twenties. Only three female main characters, and none of them are portrayed in any way favorably, leaving out another huge group of

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