preview

Disillusionment In The Great Gatsby

Decent Essays

The Great Gatsby is a novel based on the 1920s told from the perspective of Nick Carraway. As the story unfolds we experience and get to know the lives of many wealthy young people in the Jazz Age of the 1920s. Throughout the novel various images and events are used to reflect the moral disillusionment of these young people. In The Great Gatsby, the valley of Ashes is half way between West Egg and New York. It is an abandoned dumping ground that reflects lost morals. In the Valley of Ashes there is a billboard of a pair glasses. This billboard is a representation an unforgotten God, “They look out of no face, but, instead from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass under a non-existent nose” (Fitzgerald 23). The young wealthy people in the novel make amoral decisions and tend to go about life without taking responsibility and accepting consequences. …show more content…

Myrtle, the wife of George Wilson, is having an affair with Tom Buchanan. Despite the way Tom treats her and that she is aware of his marital status, she still is in a sense hopeful in regards to their “relationship.” Jordan Baker, Daisy’s close friend in the novel, is initially introduced as a fraudulent woman, “She was incurably dishonest. She wasn’t able to endure being at a disadvantage…” (Fitzgerald 58). Jordan Baker’s deceiving personality and Myrtle’s reluctant personality to better herself and her situation reveals their moral disillusionment because they live life simply as if nothing is wrong or is able to change and be

Get Access