The Role Of Wealth In The Great Gatsby

Throughout ‘The Great Gatsby’ Fitzgerald presents the idea that the wealthy people are spilt into two distinct groups. The first group are the characters born into wealth, for example; Tom and Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker. These are the characters that come from generations of wealth and have the ‘easy life’. They do not work, nor have to worry about anything other than themselves. They have security and ‘peers’ whom share the same taste as them. These are the people that are classed as ‘old money’. Furthermore, the other group are the characters that have worked for their wealth or have little wealth to their name, for example; Gatsby, Nick Carraway, Myrtle and George Wilson. These characters all work for a living; they do not have the

In the 1920’s, social classes were divided with a large gap. The poor wanted nothing to do with the rich, and the rich wanted even less to do with the poor. In the novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, he uses the class structure in the 1920’s to redefine poverty. While the rich people in the novel are material rich, they are still “poor” socially and psychologically.

The Consequences of Having Great Wealth “You can have all the money and power in the world but it can’t buy you happiness and it certainly can’t buy you love” (Anonymous). True happiness comes from the inside and cannot be bought. The concept that happiness can’t come from wealth is a prevalent theme in Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. In The Great Gatsby, Nick Caraway narrates his life in a world filled with rich social gatherings, corruption and love affairs.

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.

In many literary works, the wealthy are generally depicted as pretentious or cruel and authors tend to portray their personalities through various methods. In his work The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses literary techniques to distinctly characterize the wealthy. Doing so helps him communicate the work’s theme on the soulless nature of the affluent. Fitzgerald conveys his message by incorporating juxtaposition, effective diction, and suiting moods with his characters.

The Negative Influence of Wealth Wealth and prosperity are the core of living a lavish lifestyle and having a successful life. However, money can influence people into debauchery. In the book, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald introduces to us to some of the dangers of being rich. Most people in the Great Gatsby were very privileged, and they lived a lavish lifestyle.

Humans, by our very nature, are always striving to achieve more in life. Unfortunately, our materialistic society, and that of the Roaring Twenties, interpret this as striving for wealth. That pursuit often becomes all-consuming, eventually hindering our pursuit of gratifying life goals. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald depicts wealth as a fraudulent thief whose pursuit must be abandoned for the sake of tangible fulfillment. He illustrates the dangers of attempting to find gratification in wealth through the life of Jay Gatsby, who ironically sacrifices morality, identity, and love in order to gain wealth, which he attempts to use to justify his claim to these very things. When Gatsby loses everything, we see that wealth not only fails as a means of fulfillment but actively participates in the destruction of this goal. Fitzgerald suggests that wealth cannot lead to happiness, rather it undermines the existing and potential good in life. It should therefore should not be used as means of attaining fulfillment.

Throughout this novel Fitzgerald illustrates how such economic prosperity affected the upper and middle classes who are, of course, represented expertly through one-dimensional characters like Nick Carraway, Jay Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker. In The Great Gatsby readers are made to realise that money is not everything, that paper cannot buy happiness. How meaningful and true. It becomes clear that despite America gaining a plethora of newfound wealth, people should not disregard their humanity in pursuit of fortune because, consequently, they become corrupt, blinded and obsessed like the characters. To further stress these messages, powerful metaphors such as the green light (an elusive goal), the Valley of Ashes (the plight of the poor/moral and social decay) and the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg (Eyes of God judging America) have been used.

Class status has to do with a series of different aspects that relate to the degree

How does the desire to pursue money and power negatively impact the characters' moral sense of right or wrong?

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (Fitzgerald 179). This quote captures the advantages the upper class has because of their money. Tom and Daisy’s actions left three people dead, yet they received no punishments .They put all their baggage on the lower class, and left them to pick up the pieces.     In The Great Gatsby, the theme of social class is very significant in the book. Scott F. Fitzgerald used the theme of social class to show the reader that it plays a much bigger role in life.

The impact of socioeconomic status can be examined through a myriad of lenses. F. Scott Fitzgerald aims to show the relationship between socioeconomic status and power. Throughout The Great Gatsby, Tom’s character shows that socioeconomic status is equivalent to power within the novel.

In the novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald characterizes the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values. One of the major themes explored in this novel is the Hollowness of the Upper Class. The entire book revolves around money including power and little love. Coincidentally the three main characters of the novel belong to the upper class and throughout the novel Fitzgerald shows how this characters have become corrupted and have lost their morality due to excess money and success and this has led them to change their perspective towards other people and they have been portrayed as short-sighted to what is important in life. First of all, we have the main character of this novel, Gatsby who won’t stop at nothing to become rich overnight in illegal dealings with mobsters such as Wolfsheim in order to conquer Daisy’s heart.”

What is wealth? Wealth is the abundance of valuable possessions or money. Wealth in The Great Gatsby plays a major role; it can get you to the top of the social hierarchy, buy you nice shirts, or it can throw elaborate parties in your name. Wealth can even buy love, but it can never buy happiness or genuine, real love. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, money is used to demonstrates the distance between people.

No matter the status, money always keep the world revolving. For example food, water, bills, ice cream, clothes, and daily needs all require money in order for us to have them. We need most of those items in order to survive.