How Is Society Portrayed In The Great Gatsby

Wealth identified how you lived to the people surrounding you in society. It was wealth that built you and destroyed you. Wealth overshadowed true love and beauty in The Great Gatsby. Those who had old money looked down upon those with new money, while those who were not rich was ignored by society. Wealth and the desire to be accepted by the society distracted the characters from making moral decisions.

However, the elite class were the ones who usually possessed the high valued goods, and the lower class were the ones who tried to produce these goods. This created a difference is social ladder; from the higher working class (elite) and lower working class

The Connection of Wealth and Personality in Fitzgerald’s Works In our society, money is seen as the most important factor in decision making and in our overall lives. This is shown throughout all of Fitzgerald’s works and in many of his characters. His stories continually mention the effect that money has on the community. In one of her criticisms, Mary Jo Tate explains that “[Fitzgerald] was not a simple worshiper of wealth or the wealthy, but rather he valued wealth for the freedom and possibilities it provided, and he criticized the rich primarily for wasting those opportunities.

Labor strikes and riots were common during the time. Policies were put into place to prevent individuals from gaining this much power ever again. In todays’ modern Gilded Age loopholes have been exploited and the rich are becoming just as powerful as they have ever been. Individuals such as the Koch Brothers have taken up the plutocratic mantle, they “buy politicians” in order to further their agenda and business

It is sort of the opposite of the pros in a way. You see when redistribution is taking place, big businesses and the wealthy are unable to create businesses, and hire. It acts as a cinder block in a way that it can bring the economy down. One last note regarding cons is that many despise redistribution because they feel they are forced to give their hard earned money away and that it promotes laziness even. I personally find my view leading against income distribution for not only political reasons, but for economic reasons and how it can effect the aggregate

Between 1877-1900, both Republican and Democratic parties used tactics that purposely ignored major social issues in order to win elections. Also, many capitalists believed in the idea of limited government that included laissez-faire economics and Social Darwinism. These capitalists who were upper-class men agreed that “a man who is present as a consumer, yet who does not contribute either by land, labor, or capital to the work of society, is a burden” (Sumner). These heartless people also believed in Social Darwinism and The Gospel of Wealth. Based on their understanding, “it were better for mankind that the millions of the rich were thrown into the sea than so spent as to encourage the slothful, the drunken, the worthy” (Carnegie).

The Outsiders Have you ever wished you could be rich? Or have a bigger house? Do you think that those who are not rich are a menace? Well in the book The Oustiders by S.E Hinton, The socs are more of a menace than the greasers because of the money they have, their parents mindset, and the society’s popular choice.

In Rachel Sherman’s “A Very Expensive Ordinary Life: Conflicted Consumption,” the argument centres around the “legitimization” of wealth by the New York’s upper class in order to be seen as not only rich, but morally worthy. The possession of great wealth alongside their less fortunate peers could be uncomfortable also for those that hold the city’s riches. Hence, New York’s affluent has “legitimized” their wealth and consumption, or on a more macro level, the inequality between the social classes in the city in order to feel more comfortable in their spending, and to manage the impression of the wealthy in the eyes of the greater public in the much morally contested behaviour of lavish spending in an unequal society. This is supported throughout the reading by the justification of excessive spending and consumption by the claim that the rich live an “ordinary” life. The need that they feel towards justifying their spending comes to show that their amount of spending is excessive in the eyes of the ordinary person, in which they also acknowledge themselves as well.

The desire to be successful exists in everyone but success is often associated with the possession of wealth and material goods. These characteristics in people will lead to unhappiness. One particular sin evident in the world today is greed. Greed is defined as an excessive desire to possess wealth or goods and the greed that exists in the world leads people to unhappy and selfish lives. This is evident in individual people, corporate companies and in the government.

The lower class doesn’t have the opportunity to express their feelings and achieve reforms. They don’t have this chance because the wealthy oppress them. The poor “[have] the knowledge [they are] small but [they] lack the courage to be otherwise” (20). This example from Smith’s text shows that the poor know they aren’t as powerful as the wealthy but they don’t have the guts to stand up for themselves because they have a fear of not being accepted and ridiculed by the wealthy. Another example from Smith’s text shows that the wealthy are astonished by when the poor speak up for themselves.