Corruption In The Great Gatsby

As a society, America has created certain ideas and stereotypes of each class including the citizens within them. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald focuses around the superficial communities of West and East Egg, and their misconceptions of one another. The citizens of East Egg, such as Daisy and Tom Buchanan, frown upon the up-and-coming men of West Egg. This includes Gatsby, who dreams of the riches they take for granted. Gatsby, who obtains his money through dishonest means appears villainous, unsuccessfully attempting to join the wealthy and elite society of East egg. However, there may be more to Gatsby's story. As Nick, the narrator, says he is “worth the whole damn bunch put together”(154). Through his descriptions and comparison of Tom’s house and Gatsby’s house, Fitzgerald reveals the true nature of the two men. While Gatsby appears to be morally corrupt, in the end he actually has pure intentions, instead it is Tom who emits negativity and is ungrateful for his life.

Often when thinking of symbolism, people and actions are thought of first. Guilt now a days leads to corruption, whether it is guilt for what has happened in the past, present or what is wished to happen. Guilt is all over the world; Corruption is all over the world. Tim O’Brien author of The Things They Carried, takes the reader to the Vietnam War, on his life travels during and after the war. F. Scott Fitzgerald author of The Great Gatsby, takes readers to the Roaring Twenties to see the life of different social classes and the problems that may come along when they all come together.

The Great Gatsby is a story about how corruption causes absence of true love, and how the desire for true love can cause disastrous consequences. Jay Gatsby had a number of downfalls and he is a great example of the desire for true love. Gatsby’s downfalls were his dreams and aspirations about Daisy, social class and how others viewed him.

In The Great Gatsby, Scott F. Fitzgerald shows that the American Dream is a belief that if you work hard and act according to American Ideals, you will be able to prosper and life a happy full, rich life through the characterization of, Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson. Fitzgerald was born September 24, 1896 and passed away on December 21, 1940. He published The Great Gatsby on April 10, 1925 and it was considered his best work. It was based of off the 1920’s culture and the Disillusionment and cynicism due to World War II. In The Great Gatsby, Scott F. Fitzgerald lets you see the corruption and destruction of the American dream.

In the time period of the 1920s everyone was on a journey to achieve wealth and success, although partaking in this journey often left to a corruption of judgment. Love, lust, and wealth are all factors in the distortion of someone’s judgement. As seen in the book The Great Gatsby, a book set in the 1920s time period, we see many examples of corruption due to these specific causes. We, the reader, encounter many experiences of lust in the affairs between Tom and Mrytle and Daisy and Gatsby, which further lead to the corruption of their marriages. It is also seen that Gatsby’s love for Daisy leads him into corruption, forcing himself to be over the top in luxuries in order to win her back. Overall his efforts fail, but this initial desire to

Jay Gatsby did not hail from old money, rather, he acquired his own wealth built from an insignificant background - Gatsby was new money. He held a resentment for his meaningless roots, and at a young age he decided to erase any trace of his impoverished past starting with his name “James Gatz - that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen...I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people - his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all,” (Fitzgerald 104). Gatsby hid behind his new name and established a facade that encompassed his very being. He was embarrassed that he was not born somebody, and his hard-earned wealth did not erase the fact that he was not a pure-breed of the upper class. The name was not enough, Gatsby knew that for him to be old money, he must have lived the life of old money, “so he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end,” (Fitzgerald 104). In Gatsby’s eyes, a somebody was not only wealthy, but they themselves were pristine money. With this idea in mind, Gatsby dubbed himself old money using a tale that could never be proven or disproven - ‘“I am the son of some wealthy people in the middle-west - all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition.”’ (Fitzgerald 68). This is the reality that Gatsby made for himself, and the reality Fitzgerald dreamed for, whether it be an effect of the rejection from his Golden Girl, or because posh lifestyle and background was a tempting social class of the time. Fitzgerald’s

illusion is shattered and only the remnants of one’s aspiration is left over. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s the Great Gatsby and T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song embody the different modernist tenets in their works. Fitzgerald emphasizes the decay and corruption within society while T.S. Eliot focuses on the unwavering psyche in reality. However both works prove to reveal the facades that many uphold. Fitzgerald and T.S. Eliot use the theme of pretenses to portray the false representations that corrupt one’s moral values.

Although mainly found in, but not limited to, the upper class, the corruption can be seen as a major theme in The Great Gatsby along with the rise of consumerism. After World War I had ended, the mindset of “living life to the fullest” each day became apparent, especially in women, much like it is today. Tradition became obsolete and without the knowledge of any constant in their lives, Americans started to become unsure of where to direct themselves. F. Scott Fitzgerald is known as one of the most influential authors in the 20th century as he gave readers an overview of the changing morals in America at the time. Seeming to take ideas and situations from his own life, Fitzgerald was able to capture the exploitation of the American Dream especially in the upper class and relate it to the general

The Corruption in the World of Gatsby The amount of corruption in Gatsby’s world is similar to the amount that people see in everyday life in current times, but for people in the roaring 20’s the horrible acts went on behind the scenes of the glamor and the parties. The introduction of prohibition in 1920 gave people the ability to break laws and not be looked down upon by their peers. Along with the corruption of the physical world and the people within it, those peoples dreams have become immoral and corrupt as well, especially the American Dream. Something that was so innocent and so pure became horribly unethical because of the pleasure and the law breaking that became common and unprotested during the 1920’s.

The Great Gatsby meticulously portrays the 1920s corruption and pursuit of the American Dream through not only the East Egg lifestyle, but the characters simply existing in that lifestyle. The social novel was published in 1925, at the height of the prohibition era which the story is set. In the years eliciting to prohibition laws being put in place, many “Social reformers blamed alcohol for poverty, health problems, and the neglect by husbands…” (Kyvig). In the eyes of the social reformers, the main reason Americans weren’t living the American Dream was because of the way alcohol affected people. While alcohol was obviously illegal to buy, sell, and consume, the upper class drank regularly. In fact, Jay Gatsby, who hosted gaudy parties daily,

“Riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.”(Fitzgerald). F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota, into a very prestigious, catholic family. Edward, his father, was from Maryland, and had a strong allegiance to the Old South and its values. Fitzgerald’s mother, Mary, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who became wealthy as a wholesale grocer in St. Paul. His upbringing, affected much of his writing career. Half the time F. Scott Fitzgerald thought of himself as the “heir of his father's tradition, which included the author of The Star-Spangled Banner, Francis Scott

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the setting of New York in the nineteen twenties performs an extensive role in the novel. Although the nineteen twenties are a time of economic prosperity, they appear to be a time of corruption and crime as well. In New York, particularly, the nineteen twenties are a time of corruption and moral scarcity. The setting is during the Jazz Age as well, where popularity, fashion, and commerce are a primary inclination. The setting of The Great Gatsby efficaciously portrays the behavior of the characters in The Great Gatsby, as well as the plot and development. The setting assiduously delineates how themes, motifs, and symbols can fluctuate in relation to the time or location. The setting of The

The American Dream. A dream for an innumerable number of Americans who so desperately wants to achieve. The dream of being able to accomplish anything in life through hard work and to have a perfect family. “The Great Gatsby”, by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a satirical story of the American Dream during the Gilded Age, representing the economic and political turmoil and corruption that was all covered up by a glitzy and glamorous society and culture that appeared on the outside to be a prosperous nation. The characters that are described in this novel are shown to be corrupted by the pursuit of fame and wealth, they have never worked a single minute of their lives to earn anything on their own.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald took place in the early 1920s. The main theme within this book is the corruption of the American Dream. According to Nick in Chapter 9, The American Dream used to be about a pursuit of happiness; to build a new life, “...I became aware of that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes-a fresh, green breast of the new world. It’s vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory...to his capacity for wonder”(Fitzgerald 154). Now the dream has been corrupted by an empty pursuit to gain as much pleasure and wealth as people can get.

In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, characters are depicted as corrupt human beings influenced by their own personal agendas. With an indistinguishable line between right and wrong, they remain unaware of the consequences that follow their actions. Daisy Buchanan is portrayed as the “golden girl” of her time. She is the woman every man wants to call their own, although they only focus on her superficial features rather than personal qualities. Throughout the novel, her true self begins to unfold, displaying how she misleads others to protect her social stature and reputation. Daisy’s submissive nature continuously hurts the people she cares about by allowing her to engage in dishonest activities.