Fitzgerald's Use Of Materialism In The Great Gatsby

In this generation, it’s not a lie that people can get materialistic and greedy for money. Exhibiting that $795 Coach handbag, displaying your new Mercedes-Benz all over Facebook, and especially strutting around the hallway with your new Jordans with plastic covered around them because they’re too precious to be dirtied; they’re all common practices to find in a person’s personality these days. A very gigantic and clear-cut theme of the The Great Gatsby is the obsession with money and possessing materialistic traits. Fitzgerald uses this theme and portrays it in the characters of the book to represent the social high life of socialites in the 1920s.

One way Fitzgerald states the theme of money and materialism in the novel is through his characters.

With the death of Gatsby, Nick called some people to attend Gatsby’s funeral, in which he called Wolfsheim, a “friend” of Gatsby, however “by the time [Nick] had the number it was long after five and no one answered the phone.” The unresponsive call from Wolfsheim depicts that people will do anything to protect them and their wealth as shown by Wolfsheim, in which readers could infer he didn’t attend due to controversies that may surround him at the funeral full of paparazzis Another person Nick telephoned spoke badly of Gatsby, however “he was one of those who used to sneer most bitterly at Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby’s liquor” indicates the person Nick telephoned only cared for the liquor of Gatsby’s and the parties, not Gatsby, thus no one came to Gatsby’s funeral except a small group of people such as Henry Gatz and Nick. This reflects the theme Fitzgerald wants to expose---there was only attraction to the grand parties of Gatsby and his wealth---the greediness for money and the materialistic traits of the individual---but there was no indulgement to Jay Gatsby as a