Essay On Disillusionment In The Great Gatsby

Before the 1920’s, the US had been at a war known as WW1 with countries such as Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire. The war had finally come to an end in the year 1918 with a victory for the US and the men were shipped back to their respected homes after months of brutal and intense warfare. After returning these men returned with a different way of thinking than they did when they first went. This feeling or new way of thinking was known as disillusionment which at the the time happend to be very common amongst former soldiers. America in the 1920’s saw the rise Disillusionment, the ‘Newly Rich’, as well as the overcoming of God via Advertisement. These thoughts and ideas were reflected in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fictional story The Great Gatsby as well as in the story Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920’s by Frederick Lewis Allen.
Disillusionment is defined as the “loss of faith in one’s values and ideals”. Disillusionment was very common amongst former soldiers during the 1920’s and it had men who had once believed in god believing in things such as “why waste time for an unpromised afterlife when the one life we are given could be lived to its full unrestrained

After the war, everyone wanted a piece of currency. From 1924 to 1927 there was “A leap from 75 to 283 in the number of Americans who paid taxes on income of more than a million dollars a year”(Doc. C). Many had wanted the lifestyles of the ‘Old Money’ and did their best to from the illusion that they were a part of that class. This is shown when Gatsby had contributed to the illusion by buying actual books as remarked by the owl eyed man when he claimed “They’re real… Absolutely real-have pages and everything”(Doc. D). Gatsby, like many other of the nouveau riche, had gone out of his way and spent thousands if not millions of dollars just so he could help build up the illusion that he was part of the ‘Old Money’