Prosperity In The Great Gatsby

Wealth and fame are not necessities that are needed to be happy with life. Fame and wealth are very sought after, because many people think those things and happiness go hand and hand. The Great Gatsby is a book about love, scandal, wealth, and fame. The author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, very accurately captures all of the negative things about money and fame. F. Scott Fitzgerald grew up wealthy and privileged due to his mother and his father’s successful businesses. His father had a furniture business in St. Paul, Minnesota and his mother earned her money while owning a grocery store. Fitzgerald was born with the real name, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. He was named after his cousin, Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner. He was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota. At 15 years of age Fitzgerald met a man named, Father Sigourney Fay, who encouraged Fitzgerald to pursue his writing career. After high school, he attended Princeton University, where he wrote the scripts for Princeton’s famous Triangle Club musicals, and he occasionally wrote articles for the Princeton Tiger humor magazine (F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 28 Apr. 2017, www.biography.com/people/f-scott-fitzgerald-9296261?_escaped_fragment_=.).

In the 1920’s people of the richer culture tend to marry into more wealth. There are good examples of this in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The false love between Daisy and Tom is based off of Tom’s immense amount of money. While, Gatsby’s whole goal is to get Daisy and he uses his wealth to do it.

Daisy is the one who killed Myrtle while driving with Gatsby and used Gatsby to make herself in the clear, away from all blame. “... Gatsby touches such depth that he sacrifices himself for the women he loves, Daisy Buchanan. He never reveals that she was driving his car when it struck and killed Myrtle Wilson. Tom and Daisy Buchanan, on the contrary, are part of a ‘rotten crowd’ and seem to be merely creatures of surface, who would sacrifice themselves for not one” (Heims 59). Gatsby seems to be Daisy and Tom’s main target. Gatsby is a trusting man, perhaps too trusting. He protects Daisy until the end and precedes to take her punishment as well. Daisy and Tom would rather kill Gatsby than ever take the consequences. Tom and Daisy do not dare risk their lives for someone else's, unlike Gatsby. “By acquiescence, Daisy Buchanan survives and moves from the intriguing interlude with Gatsby

The established wealthy have the ability to use their wealth however they desire. Their wealth is important to many people below them as it can give tremendous opportunities, which can equal monetary gain for the people. But, the established wealthy many time use their wealth and statues against people, as a way to not allow characters to advance in their social and economic position. Tom Buchannan is a prominent figure in The Great Gatsby who shows this selfishness as he utilizes the immense wealth that he has to take control of people situations. He is opposed to allowing people to advance their economic status. He shows his hesitation for advancement with his control over George B Wilson when he is dealing with the terms of selling his automobile. When George comments saying, “Works pretty slow, don’t he’ ‘No he doesn’t’ said Tom coldly. ‘And if you feel that way about it maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all’ ‘I don’t mean that” explained Wilson quickly” (Fitzgerald 28). Toms defiance of, not selling his car, shows that the rich are limit the advancement of other’s to move higher up. This scenario is a microcosm of the higher American social environment, which the established wealthy try to limit the growth of peoples capital, and also limit the status of people below them. They feel that their position is of such a high value, gives them the authority to determine who advances, and who doesn’t, and the only way to be one of them is to be born into it. The

"Greed, as distinguished from honest reward for labor, leads to corruption. To fatten oneself on it is to be compromised."(Lathbury 64). Several characters in The Great Gatsby struggle with their obsessions with wealth. Their lives depend upon their money and what it can do for them. These obsessions lead to greed, and to the corruption of relationships and lives. In F. Scott Fitzgerald 's The Great Gatsby, the obsession with wealth leads to issues for many characters.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is set during the era of the roaring ‘20s and tells the story of Jay Gatsby, a remarkable yet tragic man who created an empire of wealth in order to win the hand of a woman representing the class he strove to attain. A quiet outsider, Nick Carraway narrates Jay Gatsby’s compelling character and the mystery behind his past. Gatsby along with a majority of the other characters live their life in vast luxury-- mansions in the Hamptons, custom-made cars, and champagne-drenched parties. Common sense seems to dictate that living in a limitless amount of fortune can solve all of one’s problems. However, in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald implicitly exposes the deceitful, devoid, and desolate reality hidden behind

Whether someone is choosing a higher paying job, buying a more expensive house, or even marrying a richer man, wealth has the power to influence many different things. Since the  beginning of time, humans have wanted to have wealth because they knew that with wealth you were treated differently. Wealth is often used as a theme in novels because it is a very powerful concept that influences people’s thoughts and actions. Set in the 1920s, the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald uncovers the truth about how people’s reactions to historical events-- including the flapper era, the Women’s Rights Movement, and prohibition-- were influenced by the theme of wealth.

Some people have been wealthy their entire lives. Others gained wealth later in their lives. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby becomes incredibly rich during the 1920’s. Gatsby and many other characters in the novel both use their money to buy extravagant items, but there are still plenty of differences between the two social classes. The actions of the characters in this novel and whether they come from new found money or age old illustrate the theme that money can cause people to behave differently.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone . . . just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had". (Fitzgerald,1.) In The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, it is impossible for those with poor backgrounds to be accepted by people from the opposite side of the social scale and achieve the American Dream. The main character Gatsby has worked hard and climb the ladder to richness, but he can never truly be like those who live in the East Egg, even though Gatsby worked hard to earn all the wealth he acquired he still isn't accepted by the East Egg society, due to the way he gained all his wealth .

Wealth can give us short-lived pleasure but will lead to our destruction in the end. This theme is heavily induced in Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. This book tells the tale of Nick Carraway telling his story about moving to New York. Nick meets many affluent, amiable and lofty people and gets intertwined in their lives. Nick befriends Jay Gatsby, who is one of the most flamboyant people Nick knows. Gatsby’s wealth is derived from his lost love Daisy Buchanan, whom he is determined will love him more due to his exceptional fortune. However, the wealth of Gatsby and many other in the book ultimately leads to their demise in the end, showing how wealth can’t give us everything we want.

Over the course of time, generations come and go. They consist of certain people, with certain characteristics, motives, and goals. These people make a lasting impact on the world, and influence the generation that will follow them, but that generation will also consist of different people, with different motives and goals than that of the preceding generation. This cycle continues on, but views change constantly, which is why when N.Scott Fitzgerald identifies wealth as the primary approach to achieving the American Dream in his novel, The Great Gatsby, he is not only unmindful of other means of fulfilling the American Dream, but he is also unaware of the ambiguity of the American Dream itself, as well as the way it is interpreted by people

Myrtle Wilson, the wife of George, and the lover of Tom Buchanan, is brutally murdered toward the end of the novel. After an uncivilized afternoon in New York, Daisy and Gatsby head swiftly back to East Egg. Gatsby explains to Nick, “It all happened in a minute, but it seemed to me that she wanted to speak to us, thought we were somebody she knew” (Fitzgerald 109). Myrtle ran out toward the car looking for Tom but sadly for her it is not him. Many know about Tom’s affair, but not with whom he is having it, especially Daisy. Daisy never slows the car down, and she never realizes who she hits. This shows that Daisy is oblivious to Myrtles existence. Myrtle is sleeping with her husband, she ruins their marriage, and Daisy kills her. The irony exists in this because Daisy actually saves her marriage by killing

During the 1920’s, money and wealth were key parts to the lives of the American people. They had lots of extra money to spend on expensive items and luxurious events. Money was used to determine your place in society, the things you did, and the people you spent time with. In the Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, he shows how money and wealth can affect the lives of the characters in a positive or negative way. In a quote by Frederick C. Millet, he says, “American spirituality has been corrupted by our quest for wealth and material possessions.” In the book, characters such as Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan and many others do not understand how to control their wealth causing them to take drastic measures which could harm their future. During the Roaring Twenties, Americans were definitely controlled in a negative way by their greed and desire for money and wealth.

F.Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby takes place during the 1920s and demonstrates a “gilded age” of American history. This professes that while it may have looked like things were on an upturn, the true problems that people were facing were hidden behind a “thin coating of gold”, or the wealth, extravagance and prosperity of the upper class. During this time people were eager to increase their wealth and improve status to achieve the American Dream, or what they believed to be true happiness. What they failed to realize was that, no matter how much wealth they accumulated there were some things they still could not have, and some problems that could not be solved, they were just able to hide these issues behind the pretense of their money. Wealth is portrayed in two different ways in The Great Gatsby with the division of “old” and “new” money, and money is shown not as a path to happiness, but an empty promise that those who struggled to claim it hide their misery behind.

The American dream is Gatsby’s dream, a gone hope of something that could have been but that in fact, never was. “We recognize that the great achievement of the novel is that it manages, while poetically evoking a sense of the goodness of that early dream, to offer the most damaging criticism of it in American literature.” (Bewley, 245). Gatsby’s naïve vision is contrasted by the reality of what Daisy is, of how America has turned to be something completely away from the illusion we expected it to be: “As such, it led inevitably toward the problem that has always confronted American artists dealing with the American experience –the problem of determining the hidden boundary in the American vision of life at which the reality ends and the illusion begins.” (Bewley,