The Great Gatsby Marxist Lens Essay

Conflict is a recurring struggle throughout The Great Gatsby and Ken Allen’s “Roaring Twenties”. In Fitzgerald’s nonfiction novel, class was one of the main conflicts and reasoning’s behind many of the actions from the characters. A major social issue was class socialization. Class socialization refers to the rich socializing with the rich and the poor socializing with the poor. Classes of people were divided by wealth. In The Great Gatsby, Daisy would not be with Gatsby due to his lack of money. Since Gatsby descended from a poor family, Daisy would not accept him as a lover although she was indeed in love with him. Gatsby’s lack of wealth led to many other conflicts sustaining from his drive to earn money to prove his worth of her affection. Another conflict in The Great Gatsby was the stock market crash. The stock market crash was a major event during the Roaring Twenties. When the market crashed, prices on goods soared due to the low quantity of products resulting with millions of people becoming poor. In Allen’s poem “Roaring Twenties”, socialism

The emerging inequitable class systems and antagonisms of the nineteen twenties saw the traditional order and moral values challenged, as well as the creation of great wealth for few and poverty for many. The Great Gatsby, written by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, explores the causes and effects of the unbalanced class structures. Fitzgerald outlines the idea that the desire to accumulate wealth and status is a common ambition amongst the lower classes; when that desire is reached, the traditional upper class is challenged by the emerging newly wealthy, which finally leads to destructive consequences. By creating rigid class structures, traditional upper class, new wealth, and the poor in The Great Gatsby, it is

The Great Gatsby is a story about love and carelessness, as represented by two characters: Tom and Daisy. Throughout this story, we learn about their true personalities. We are introduced to a enormously wealthy married couple who comes from old money. They come off as a kind, fun-loving couple, and respectful of each other and friends. Although they have money, they don’t seem to use it as a vehicle to lord themselves over other people.

Marxist View on Contrast Between Social Classes in The Great Gatsby How much money someone possesses influences many factors in their lives. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald displays this through each character's possessions and affiliations. Upper class characters in the book have lavish lives that are more dependent on material items like their boastful houses. These same characters also tend to act selfishly towards other people and seem detached from their careers, if they work at all. The lower class characters depend more on their relationships and careers for emotional and physical stability, but have less material objects or status to show for it.

In Fitzgerald’s famous novel, “The Great Gatsby”social classes in the 1920s serve as a significant theme, with an emphasis on the differences between old money and new money. Through multiple interactions between characters and decision making, a clear distinction can be drawn between the differences in classes portrayed in the novel. The narrator, Nick Carraway, reflects on how those born into money receive certain advantages and privileges rather than those who are poor, or worked for their wealth, highlighting the unfairness of the social hierarchy. He states this when he expresses that, “a sense of fundamental decency is parcelled out unequally at birth” (Fitzgerald 2). Nick’s observations and opinions only continue to build during the

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’s literary work, The Great Gatsby, creates an artificial world in which the main characters desire the clout of money; where the characters, the plot, and the setting are deeply immersed in a capitalistic vow to shatter the American Dream, allowing certain socialistic aspects to emerge with regularity. This oppression of power framework can be connected to a Marxist Theory of belief through power struggles amongst characters. The main characters face oppression against one another in such senses allowing for corruptive factors to be engaged. Corruption and innocence of Gatsby and Tom’s weaknesses toward the women of the novel create such viewpoints that are construed within the text as well as a hint toward the negative side of Capitalism and the promotion of

Marxist theory supports classification of people regarding their income and items they posses. Referring to “The Great Gatsby” we can make constant connection to the vast difference between characters social classes. The setting of “The Great Gatsby” indicates characters social statues. There are three areas of the setting East Egg, West Egg, and Valley of Ashes, oddly we can divide each area into economic class. Depending on the residence living in these areas.

The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, is hailed as a masterpiece of American fiction. The author, F. Scott Fitzgerald offers up a commentary on the American society of which he was a part. He successfully encapsulates the mood of a generation during a politically and socially crucial and chaotic period of American history. In fact, The Great Gatsby stands as a brilliant piece of English literature, offering a vivid peek into American life in the 1920s. Fitzgerald carefully sets up his novel into distinct groups with each group having its own problems to contend with, for the sole purpose of leaving a powerful reminder of what a precarious place America truly was. By creating distinct social classes — old money, new

The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The book takes during 1925. The book is filled with many themes. Marxism and Feminism are a couple of the more well own themes within the book. Marxism is theory which was developed by Karl Marx.

Karl Marx wrote in his 1859 ‘Towards a Critique of Political Economy’ that “it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence but their social existence that determines their consciousness”. By stating this, Marx sheds light into the workings of ‘The Great Gatsby’ thus showing that the social circumstances in which the characters find themselves define them, and that these circumstances consist of core Marxist principles a Capitalistic society. These principles being ‘commodity fetishism’ and ‘reification’ are useful aids in interpreting and understanding the core themes that run throughout the text.

The objective of this research is to analyze the class struggle in the novel The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald published in 1925. It is considered as one of the classic novels of American fiction. The writer beautifully portrays the story of cross sections in American society and gives them the names like new money, old money, some money and no money. Theme of the American dream figures prominently in this story.

The Great Gatsby novel was first published in 1925 and has had a long lasting influence in America. According to Harold Bloom, “It is reasonable to assert that Jay Gatsby was the major literary character of the United States in the twentieth century”. The Novel takes place during the early 1920s, post WWI. This time was later referred to as the “roaring twenties” and was when the economic boom of the country was in full swing. The novel follows Jay Gatsby, a man who orders his life around one desire to reunite with the love of his life, Daisy Buchanan.

I have chosen to analyze The Great Gatsby through a Marxist critical lens. Marxism states that there is a conflict in society between the upper class and lower class and this novel is a perfect example of that statement. The author of The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was born into an upper middle-class family so he was pretty financially stable until he began writing. Due to his first novel producing high sales, he and his wife Zelda began living a luxurious lifestyle.

This novel is a clear-cut representation of Marxism. The key themes, symbols and characterization correspond to the dimensions of Marxism. Besides high class and lower class, there is a conversation about feudal and bourgeois. The terms “old money” is representation of feudal people and “nouveau riche” is representation of bourgeois people as a concept of Marxist theory of class struggle. Tom represents feudal people with his wealth and authority, whereas Gatsby represents bourgeois people with his effort to get the wealth and changes his social status.