How does cheating on the middle and low classes cause the problems that there left with? In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays the life of cheaters in New York City during the 1920s from all the social classes. Fitzgerald is trying to tell that the scandals and cheats of the rich, middle, and poor classes are all the immoral but only the middle, and low paying classes pay with their lives. Nick the narrator portrays into a lost mind stuck with the lies and cheats of his fellow family and friends, keeping the secrets to himself not speaking of them ever. Nick and Tom go on a trip to the valley of ashes but Tom isn't there for nothing he is there to see Mrytle his secret lover, making Nick keep Tom secret from Daisy his cousin(28-42). Nick later meets his neighbor Gatsby who tells him the secrets and lies about his life saying there was a certain someone that the Gatsby loved dearly it was Daisy. Having, Nick make a get to getter with Nick married cousin lying to Daisy face having the Gatsby and Daisy have an affair kept that from Tom. Nick knew why Gatsby and Mrytle were dead they died cause the lies and secrets that kept Nick quiet the rich had the upper hand in this account ( 171-187). Tom actions as a rich, lying and cheating man causes the death of the poor and middle classes. Tom is sneaking around with the poor Myrtle while Tom is married with Daisy keeping this to himself and nobody else but Nick knows this cheating scandal. Tom and Nick our go
that characterizes the lives of Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby. One particular scene that highlights Nick's true character is when he accompanies Gatsby to the Buchanan's house after the accident. Nick witnesses the disregard for others with which Tom and Daisy treat the situation, and he is unable to restore friendly relations between their behavior with his own moral code. Nick is bummed out because he no longer believes in the wealthy and privileged class is evident in this scene, as he realizes the emptiness and hypocrisy that underlies their lives. Ultimately, Myrtle's death serves as a catalyst for Nick to reevaluate his own values and beliefs.
Nick invites Daisy over to his house for tea, without telling her that Gatsby is going to be there. When she gets there, she is pretty shocked to see him, and they both go through an emotional stage. Tom is not very happy when he learns about Gatsby. He thinks that Daisy is cheating on him, which she technically is. On a hot summer day, they all decide to go to town and rent a room at the Plaza Hotel. When they get there, Tom and Gatsby have this big argument about who Daisy loves. She loved Tom when they first married, but then her feelings went back to Gatsby. They all then decide to leave. Daisy is driving back when she accidentally hits Myrtle, Tom’s lover, and she kept on driving. Myrtle ended up dying instantly. The husband vows to kill whoever killed his wife. Nick knows something is going to happen so that night he goes over to Gatsby’s and tells him that he needs to leave and he doesn’t. Tom tells the husband of the woman killed that it was Mr. Gatsby’s car that hit his wife. From grieving he went mentally insane and he found out Gatsby’s house, and he went there and killed Gatsby. Nick held a small funeral for
While Gatsby and Daisy pursued their love affair, Tom, Daisy’s husband was having his own affair with another women. The triangle becomes out of hand which leads to some unexpected deaths. Which leds us to Nick carraway's thoughts about the situation and on how no one paid their respects.
Coining the term ‘Jazz Age’, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, a modern American writer, has skillfully portrayed the social status, and class of the Post World War I Americans, their illusive pursuit of ‘American Dream’, their luxurious and careless life style in the mode of high class society etc. in his brilliant masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. The novel is the underlying commentary regarding the ascending of the social ladder, the causes behind this, the pursuit of material wealth, how it is associated with racism and sexuality, and the reaction of the consequences. It is found in the novel that the narrator is merely a witness in a character-oriented story, and the characters do not portray the real people, but rather present the cultural and economic state in a class-based materialistic, extravagant, disillusioned, and racist American society. Fitzgerald, in characterization, divides society into various groups defined by wealth and social status and makes a queer relationship between money, love, and sex through the thematic lens of social stratification and ethnic approach.
Money is essential for survival; it can bring happiness, despair, or corruption. It rules our daily lives, is preferred in large amounts, and separates us into different social classes. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, is a perfect example of this since the class structure within the novel, portrays how money or the need for it can cause corruption in all the different social classes. This is shown through the three distinct classes: old money represented by the Buchanan’s and their self-centered, racist nature, new money represented by Gatsby and his mysterious, illegal ways, and a class that can be called no money represented by the Wilson’s and their attempts at
The author of The Great Gatsby, Francis Scott-Fitzgerald, was born in Minnesota in 1896. He was born into a middle class family and spent most of his childhood living in New York because of his fathers job. Fitzgerald attended Princeton but did not get the chance to graduate because he enrolled into the Army. He was stationed at Fort Leavenworth and was under the influence of Dwight Eisenhower. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald portrays the life of the working class and how people's dreams of moving up in social class began to dwindle if they did not stay hopeful.
Fitzgerald, in his sarcastic novel The Great Gatsby, frequently shows how racism and classism seriously influence the possibilities of achieving American dreams in obscure methods. The novel details Gatsby’s achievements and dream including Daisy, and makes comparison with other people in different races and classes indirectly but visibly. The fact that, though Gatsby is much wealthier than those in East Egg, he has never achieved the American dream, never owned Daisy truly and never acquired respect, but rumours, due he isn’t born in high class and makes money through bootleg. To some extent, the miserable end of Gatsby is the reflection of the disparity of classism. Gatsby’s mansion reminds people of the feasibility of making the American dream come true. However, his unexpected death that is not caught by police, but killed by Wilson, a white man in mid class, proves that it is related to races and classes closely. Fitzgerald takes us into the suffering of Gatsby to show us that the American dream is like a shell company, which makes everyone look forward to their future with great expectations, but only certain people can truly reach it because people are not standing on the same starting line.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the finest American authors of the twentieth century wrote The Great Gatsby during the Jazz Age to critique the distortion of the American dream, and his work has lasted long past his lifetime. Fitzgerald discusses the nature of love and wealth and stresses the importance of defining a person beyond their external position. In his novel, letter to his daughter, and the screenplay adapted from the novel, it is clear that F. Scott Fitzgerald utilizes exposition, narration, and imagery to illustrate how people in the 1920s did not understand the meaning of true love and worried about superficial characteristics, thus resulting in the corruption of the American dream from the pursuit of true love and equality to the pursuit of wealth and discrimination; however, he moralizes that human beings are capable of emotional growth and of escaping the illusion of wealth.
Social classes are truly like a ladder, but that final step is by far the most difficult. Trying to become the most powerful, and successful person around it an almost impossible task, which very few will ever achieve. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby spends his entire life attempting to climb the social ladder, in order to win back his young love, Daisy Buchanan. The novel makes a naturalism argument stating that no matter how hard you try, and how much you think you’ve achieved in your life, you will most likely never be able to rise from a lower social class.
However, Fitzgerald explores much more than the failure of the American dream, he is more deeply concerned with its total corruption. Gatsby has not achieved his wealth through honest hard work, but through bootlegging and crime. His money is not simply ‘new’ money it is dirty money, earned through dishonesty and crime. His wealthy lifestyle is little more than an illusion, as is the whole person Jay Gatsby. Gatsby has been created from the dreams of the boy James Gatz. It is not only Gatsby who is corrupt.
Nick summarizes Daisy and Tom as reckless people saying, “I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – 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 and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (Fitzgerald 136). When Daisy hit Myrtle she let others take the blame to keep her reputation intact. Nick may accept what had happened, but he thought how Daisy and Tom handled it was perverse. Daisy and Tom’s negligence ended up taking two lives: Gatsby and Myrtles. Tom and Daisy use their money to shield them from all the problems in the world. Nick again comments on their frivolous behavior saying, “Why they came East I don't know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.”(Fitzgerald 17). This quote shows how Daisy and Tom drift wherever they feel and ruin whoever’s life gets involved with them. They are the equivalent of a golden freight train ready to demolish anything that stands in the way of their fun. Neither of them care what happens or who gets hurt on the way as long as they have their money to protect
F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays social class in a way that shows money can't buy everything. Throughout the story you see three classes old money, new money, and no money. Each class tends to face their own set of problems throughout the novel. Surprisingly in many cases the ones who have less tend to be happier. The Great Gatsby puts great stress on money and social classes however, money can't buy happiness nor guarantee true love.
“‘Gatsby?’ demanded Daisy. ‘What Gatsby?’”(11). F. Scott Fitzgerald created “The Great Gatsby” with great craft. The reader understands the story through Nick’s eyes. Nick encounters many parties, family gatherings, and a funeral. The scenes are so in depth that the reader feels as if they are reliving the events in Nick’s life. The reader can take out characteristics, thoughts of the society, and themes in each scene that emphasizes the the themes of the book as a whole. Tom’s Character and the way society thinks of Tom leads to the theme of once a cheater, always a cheater. Gatsby’s characteristics and the way society portrays him demonstrates the theme of gossip altering Gatsby’s true qualities.
Throughout the novel The Great Gatsby, there is a constant theme present: social class. Fitzgerald makes a connection between the theme of social class, and the settings in the novel for example The Valley of Ashes which is described as a “desolate area of land” (p.21) and a “solemn dumping ground” (p.21) which is where the poor people live. The Valley of Ashes is situated between West Egg and New York, West Egg being the place where the aspiring classes are situated, which is the “less fashionable of the two” (p.8), this is where Gatsby lives. West Egg is the place of ‘new money’, Fitzgerald shows this by the idea of the main character Jay Gatsby, rumoured to be selling illegal alcohol (prohibition) which means he is quickly making vast
Myrtle Wilson, a relatively minor character, belongs to the lower classes, expresses a desire to upward social mobility, but is largely prevented from doing so due to her gender. She uses love to acquire wealth and has an extramarital affair with Tom. She is not happy with her lower social status and her husband George Wilson, a representative of the lower classes and a simple man with no grand ambitions, states in the novel: “The only crazy I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in and never even told me about it,” (Fitzgerald 28). Myrtle allows us to look at her accumulation of things, such as the down-town apartment which was “… crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it, so that to move about was to stumble continuously over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles” (Lindberg 16; Fitzgerald 35).