Examples Of Greed In The Great Gatsby

Rolls Royce's pulling up on driveways, pink suits, ravishing gardens, and parties that go from sundown to sunrise; this is Jay Gatsby’s life. In The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald Gatsby seems to have everything figured out, he lives the highlife. Gatsby though, is an enigma to all, but one thing that is known is that Gatsby doesn’t struggle with a divide between his power of wealth and his dream of being with Daisy, instead he uses his power to get his dream, and Gatsby comes to stand for America itself, in the American Dream. Money equals power and with power comes opportunities, in Gatsby's case this also applies. Gatsby uses his power of enormous wealth to achieve his dream of being with Daisy, leaving no divide between the two.

“I don’t mean that he had traded on his phantom millions, but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much of the same stratum as her.” (159) Gatsby so badly wants to have his dream life with Daisy that he lies about his wealth so that she will stay with him. Soon we see that Gatsby is a bootlegger and does some not so good things to get his wealth. He want to live his American Dream so badly, that he will commit crimes to get

Money and Greed in the Great Gatsby In the novel, Jay Gatsby possesses a feeling of immortality and power because of the money he has attained. He acts as if the world revolves around him and he would have no repercussions if he committed a crime. “The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was the son of god”(98).

Albert Einstein, a renowned physicist, once said, “Money only appeals to selfishness and always tempts its owners irresistibly to abuse it." He conveys that money acts like a drug, drawing in those who selfishly desire it into an endless pit of desire. Once one has delved into that pit, the need to abuse what is offered consumes the person as whole, leaving them to be nothing but a hollow shell of their greed. This idea once again presents itself in Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, through numerous characters. Primarily, there are Daisy and Tom Buchanan, a wealthy couple from East Egg, Long Island who abuse their status and wealth in order to benefit themselves.

No matter how much money someone has or how much they’ve accomplished, they will always desire more. In the book The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author shows that the greediness of characters results in only bad things. Tom, Gatsby, and Daisy in the book were only focused on their own wants and lost appreciation for what they already had. The book shows us this a lot with daisy and Tom's relationship, Daisy betraying Gatsby, and Gatsby using Nick to get Daisy.

Throughout the book, Jay Gatsby believes the only way he will get Daisy to fall in love with him again is by becoming rich. “Gatsby’s motivation for assuming his fortune is to impress and regain Daisy, whom

They each benefited from their wealth in completely opposite ways. Jay Gatsby used his wealth to impress the woman he loved, Daisy Buchanan. He became a self-made wealthy man in order to fit into what people sought acceptable in American society and culture. Once able, he showed his riches off to Daisy. It is revealed that Daisy is a

Gatsby was once poor, and later in his life, he earned a large amount of money through illegal businesses to earn the love of Daisy, whom he lost five years ago. However, Gatsby dies in the end, and Daisy never accepts Gatsby’s love. This affects the validity of money, proving happiness in any way. Moreover, Daisy’s personification as a character is a model of someone who is born into the American Dream due to the fact that she was born in America and therefore has high status and opportunities for money. However, Daisy ends up unhappy since she has no dream to strive for.

“For the love of money is the root of all evil; While some covet after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” (Bible Timothy 6:10). The path to money is a greedy one that often leads to pain, ending up alone and being left in sorrow. In the novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald the text provides many examples of greed, lust, sneakiness, and the power wealthy people hold. Furthermore, money is the root of all evil is a statement that goes back ages, Fitzgerald’s novel speaks on this evil through the way he portrays avaricious actions, social status, and wealth.

Therefore, since he has money now, he believes that everything should simply fall into place. In order to gain wealth, Gatsby changed his name; where he once was known as James Gatz, he is now regarded as Jay Gatsby. He experiences loss, witnesses death, and additionally risks his life as a free man and gets himself involved in the illegal bootlegging business. He endures all of this to gain wealth, yet perseveres through it all for his love and overcomes it all with one goal in mind: to one day be able to renew his love with the one who he holds dearest within his heart, his one true love,

Dating back to his childhood, Gatsby developed a deadly sin during his early teenage years, ultimately leading him to his wealthy lifestyle. “[Gatsby’s] heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain… each night he added to the pattern of his fancies… these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination… they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality” (99). Gatsby’s envy of the wealthy life caused him to develop a deep desire to stray away from his life of clam digging and salmon fishing and become a wealthy man in an upper class society.

In the novel The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is a very wealthy man who lives in West Egg. He grew up not having money at all but changed that in order to better himself. He was born by the name John Gats and then later changed it once he had made all of his money. Jay Gatsby made his money illegally through organized crime; he sold illegal alcohol and stolen securities. From making all of this money, he now has one of if the biggest houses in West Egg.

The Great Gatsby presents its characters as having living the American Dream. However, it is only a belief; the behaviors they have and decisions they take only leave them with a false perception of life and lifestyle. The Great Gatsby relates to the corruption of the American Dream for those materialistic people who were after money. Fitzgerald reveals the idea of corruption in the American Dream through conditions such as wealth and materialism, power and social status, and relationships involving family and affairs. He uses examples of this corruption to show the reader that people are willing to lie, betray others, and commit crime to be able to live a ‘better and fuller’ life.

He considers money is capable of corrupting even the most innocent of people, who were living in peace and tranquility. Fitzgerald paints a picture of the greed that infects our world to this day. He addresses the problem with the rich which is still a relevant problem today. Fitzgerald represents the social elite as

As many immigrants came, they looked for new opportunities in their economic standing as financial stability is everything to a lower class citizen. In comparison however, the characters featured in The Great Gatsby take their wealth for granted and do not realize that “the apparent accumulation of wealth is really the impoverishment of human nature,” and an expansive collection of assets “and its appropriate morality is the renunciation of human nature and desires – asceticism” (Komlik). The upper class as seen in the 1920s parallels that of The Great Gatsby as each of them share the ideology that the accumulation of wealth is a necessity and a power move. However, the accumulation of affluence only furthers the dehumanizing nature as the rich become so insistent on attaining power and affluence supposedly leading to godlike powers through the social prowess obtainted. According to The Huffington Post, “materialistic values have even been linked with lower relationship satisfaction” (Gregoire)