What Is The Social Barrier In The Great Gatsby

For America, the 1920s is known as a roaring era when economic prosperity and social dynamism splendidly blossomed; It is also an era in which people’s wealth and backgrounds are directly employed in defining their identities. By making subtle changes to the original plot, the movie The Great Gatsby puts a stronger emphasis on social stratification not only between the apparent rich and the poor, but also between the old money and new money. The movie depicts the uncrossible barriers among different classes in an explicit manner, illustrating each class’s struggle in the hierarchy and allowing the individuals’ characters develop to the fullest. The movie uses physical setting as a social barrier to distinguish people by their classes and to reveal people’s desperate desire of climbing up the social ladder. While the book describes the restaurant where Gatsby, Nick, and Wolfsheim luncheon as an ordinary

Moreover, since the restaurant is frequented by superior visitors such as Gatsby, Wolfsheim, Tom and the police commissioner, the restaurant is established as a social gathering place for the wealthy people of the upper hierarchy. The movie exaggerates the restaurant as a place only known by the people of higher classes, and because it is a place used exclusively for the rich to party, the restaurant itself symbolizes the physical barrier that separates people by their wealth and class. Besides the restaurant, social stratification is also demonstrated through the interior of Myrtle’s apartment. The book provides a short and brief description of Myrtle’s apartment : “the living-room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it”, portraying it as no more than an ordinary living room. However, in the movie, the apartment is elaborately decorated in scarlet red and