Examples Of Elitism In The Great Gatsby

In the Great Gatsby, privilege comes into play. Privilege in this context means being born with advantages that you did not earn or work for. Some people have to work to get their money but others are born with money which means that they didn’t have to work for their money. Gatsby for example was not born with money. He had to make his own money by selling and dealing drugs and is now a very wealthy man.

Society is constantly under the criticism of authors. Many writers seek to expose certain aspects of American society and their scorn of it. Edith Wharton and F. Scott Fitzgerald are renowned for their work on this subject. In The Great Gatsby and The Age of Innocence, Fitzgerald and Wharton reveal their cynicism of the societal elite; they find the elite as a severe detriment to American society. Through symbolism and the characterization of their main characters, Wharton and Fitzgerald similarly depict the societal elite as depriving American society from a promising future by refusing to let go of the past.

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. Tom puts great pride and emphasis on his socioeconomic status and wealth.

The Moral Decay of the Materialistic Although F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby debuted in 1925– before the Great Depression– it serves as a prophetic exemplification of the the material excess of the 1920s that drowned out signs of the coming Great Depression. The book’s plot follows the bootlegger Jay Gatsby as he pursues his old love Daisy Buchanan through flaunting his new extravagant lifestyle, mainly by throwing ostentatious parties. Yet, in the end, Daisy chooses her unfaithful husband Tom over Gatsby. Through Fitzgerald’s use of wealthy, materialistic characters, he comments on the effect of the material excess of the roaring twenties: moral corruption.

In the novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author uses many differnt retorical devices to add a personal flare to his work. He uses diction, symbolism, and irony to adress many different themes. These themes include Materialism, The American Dream, and includes a sharp and biting ridicule on American society in the 1920’s. The main point of Fitzgerald, arguement is one where he sharply criticizes the Society of the time.

In The Great Gatsby, social status is a significant element in the book as it separates the haves from the have nots. However more importantly, social status portrays the personalities of people belonging to different classes. In the end, you are stuck in the class you are born into, and attempting to change classes only leads to tragedy and heartbreak.     In The Great Gatsby, there are three main social classes portrayed. These are old money, new money, and no money.

Throughout The Great Gatsby, Myrtle Wilson desired to fit in with the upper class; however, her marriage to George Wilson prevented such from occurring. Myrtle failed to recognize her husband’s hard work and true character due to her efforts to rise in social status. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald emphasized Myrtle’s hatred towards her marriage through her conversation with Catherine, depicting how people of the twenties focused more on wealth and power compared to moral American values. As readers closely evaluate the moment of Myrtle’s dialogue, she dictated her feelings towards her marriage in a way that supposedly justified her infidelity.

The 1920’s was a very interesting time in United States history. After all World War I had ended and many Americans did not realize that the Great Depression was in the near future, so the 1920’s fell between these two dramatic events. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby teaches many morals, but none more important than the duality of the 1920’s. Duality is evident in Gatsby's dreams, his death, his lover Daisy, his wealth, and his parties, which all reflect the duality of the 1920’s. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald makes the concept of achieving the American dream seem improbable.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby describes the life of Jay Gatsby in the 1920’s. The novel shares his love story and his loneliness. A major question the author raises is how does wealth impact class structure and society? Fitzgerald answers this question through the distinction between “New rich” and “Old rich” and the significance of East and West Egg.

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. Poverty is shown in a differently in this book than other books being written in this time era, and in doing this, it shows the rich what they are, and how they treat others from a different perspective.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby shows little, if any attention to political issues at the time. In the 1920s, also known as the “Jazz Age” the lifestyle is mostly driven by the wants and desire of individuals. Fitzgerald raises the lack of political concern at the time derived from the characters of the novel. The main political conflict is the fissure between the rich and the poor.

During the 1920s, America seemed to be a land of glamor and luxury. Underneath the beauty, however, was a vast underworld of crime: bootleggers and gangs ran rampant, controlling even members of the government. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, he tells a tale of that decade, which appears glamorous but is filled with corruption. The novel makes a naturalism argument about the impossibility of changing social class, revealing that only a facade of mobility can be achieved through debaucherous actions.

The novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a classic 20th century story -that period was also known as the “roaring twenties”- which critiques the vision of the American Dream people in general have. At that time, the idea of a free market, and industrial revolution provided the opportunity for many to seize the market and people were starting to see that they could become rich without having any type of restriction. New York city was the centre of this wealth-creating society. After the war, this movement generated new opportunities and ambitions for people wanting to start a wealthy upper class life. That period of time was all about alcohol, partying, gambling, fashion, and money.

During the twenties the economy of the United States was changing greatly. Due to the establishment of the prohibition of alcohol the billionaires were those who would smuggle the goods to society. The Great Gatsby is a novel which portrays the different societies of the United States during the twenties differently. F. Scott Fitzgerald focuses on revealing the types of lives lived by each social group. Throughout the book we are exposed to the marginalization of women and the lower class during the time, since the important individuals in society were the wealthy people who impacted the economy of the country.

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.”