Corruption of Wealth and Society through Geography in The Great Gatsby

In Long Island and New York City, during the 1920s, the novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, uses the theme geography to illustrate American society/culture. Correspondingly, the novel How to Read Literature Like a Professor, by Thomas C. Foster. Exemplifies geography as a crucial aspect in The Great Gatsby by applying geographical locations that inpreet characters, develop a plot, and emphasize the theme.

The Great Gatsby is considered to be a great American novel full of hope, deceit, wealth, and love. Daisy Buchanan is a beautiful and charming young woman who can steal a man’s attention through a mere glance. Throughout the novel, she is placed on a pedestal, as if her every wish were Gatsby’s command. Her inner beauty and grace are short-lived, however, as Scott Fitzgerald reveals her materialistic character. Her reprehensible activities lead to devastating consequences that affect the lives of every character. I intend to show that Daisy, careless and self-absorbed, was never worthy of Jay Gatsby’s love, for she was the very cause of his death.

Gatsby does not realize that Daisy also represents the corruption that comes along with wealth. "Her voice is full of money, he suddenly said. That was it. I'd never understood it before. It was full of money--that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it. . . . High in a white Palace the King's daughter, the golden girl" (127). Gatsby becomes obsessed with Daisy and her voice that promised riches, but he does not realize that money was the only thing she offered. After listening to Tom, Nick describes Daisy and Tom as careless people who "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" (188). Daisy lets Gatsby take the blame for Myrtle’s death and shows no concern over Gatsby’s death showing her carelessness with people’s lives. Tom and Daisy’s actions indicate the corrupting effects that wealth can have on someone. They focus too much on appearance and materialism and ignore other people’s feelings and lives.

Jay Gatsby is a self-made man, he turned himself from a farm boy to one of the richest men in America at the time and bought himself a beautiful mansion on West Egg, Long Island with the other new millionaires. In contrast to the newly rich, there are those who have inherited their wealth from family before them such as Tom and Daisy Buchanan. These people were lucky to be born into their lives and reside on East Egg along with other family’s with “old money”. Readers come to easily

As a society, America has created certain ideas and stereotypes of each class including the citizens within them. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald focuses around the superficial communities of West and East Egg, and their misconceptions of one another. The citizens of East Egg, such as Daisy and Tom Buchanan, frown upon the up-and-coming men of West Egg. This includes Gatsby, who dreams of the riches they take for granted. Gatsby, who obtains his money through dishonest means appears villainous, unsuccessfully attempting to join the wealthy and elite society of East egg. However, there may be more to Gatsby's story. As Nick, the narrator, says he is “worth the whole damn bunch put together”(154). Through his descriptions and comparison of Tom’s house and Gatsby’s house, Fitzgerald reveals the true nature of the two men. While Gatsby appears to be morally corrupt, in the end he actually has pure intentions, instead it is Tom who emits negativity and is ungrateful for his life.

The novel The Great Gatsby is an interesting tale of two cities really. Nick Carraway; the narrator, represents all that is good an wholesome in the great midwest. He is a well-educated man who aspires to be a bond broker. His character is conflicted internally and externally throughout the novel but really culminates into a loathing for all things eastern. Carraway’s farmboy charm and doe-eyed innocence is put to the test when he meets The Great Jay Gatsby. Gatsby represents all things Nick is unfamiliar with and is curious about. Nick, being from the midwest, has no real street smarts so when he meets the “wicked” east, his lack of experience is proof positive that he really does not belong

Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby’s relationship was damaged by their contrasting social classes, but also because he had a lack of status and wealth. In relation to this Daisy married Tom for his wealth and status not for his love, which suggests Daisy is a materialistic character is more concerned about her money and possessions than she is about intellectual and spiritual objects. “Gatsby is an idealist, he seeks for

Daisy, like her husband, is a girl of material and class at heart, and Gatsby being her escape from a hierarchist world. Daisy has just grown up knowing wealth, so in her greedy pursuit of happiness and the “American Dream” Myrtle Wilson died, Gatsby's heart and life were compromised, without claiming responsibility on her part. Daisy was “by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville...” (116) Jordan says, describing early affections between Daisy and Gatsby. She goes on to say, “...all day long the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night.” (116) . Daisy was a fancied girl who has Gatsby tied around her finger, Jordan explains that he was looking at Daisy “...in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at some time...” (117). Daisy, abusing Gatsby’s love for her uses it to create security and protection, greedily and selfishly allowing him to take the fault. While Daisy’s beautiful, alluring traits turn her into an innocent, naive flower, she plays the ultimate villain.

The west eggers on the other hand would do anything to be looked at as equal as their foes. The whole idea that inherited money meant more then earned money was more important then if you even had money at all. Tom, when realizing the lust that Gatsby and daisy were hiding for each other, was angrier at the fact that she would associate let along long to be with someone from the "west egg". This whole notion of the expectations that the East eggers had for the wealthy and rich society of New York were constantly strived toward by the west eggers driving some, such as Gatsby mad with greed and corrupting both societies from the inside out. Gatsby constantly strived to lead a rich and glamorous life to impress people like the long time wealthy such as daisy, corrupting him form a young age which he carried throughout his whole life.

Daisy, Tom’s wife and the object of Gatsby’s romantic quest, for example, possesses a voice “full of money,” (144) which blatantly associates her character with wealth. Fitzgerald makes Daisy seem desirable, but never describes her physical features, which is odd considering she is the force behind the profound obsession of Jay Gatsby. Perhaps Fitzgerald chooses to ignore Daisy’s physical description to purposefully display her as a bare character. In essence, he dehumanizes her to better reveal her shallowness. One of the few times a physical description of Daisy appears comes in conjunction with Miss Baker, another character under the spell of wealth, when Nick comments on their white dresses with “their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire” (17). With

Gatsby’s love for Daisy propels his materialism, which leads to his ultimate downfall. Gatsby uses his words and specious actions to prove to Daisy that he is rich so she will love him by giving Daisy a tour of his house. Exploring Gatsby’s house is when Gatsby is careful to point out to Daisy his lavish possessions that are present in his many extravagant rooms: “We went upstairs, through period bedrooms swathed in rose and lavender silk and vivid with new flowers, through dressing-rooms and poolrooms, and bathrooms, with sunken baths” (91). After strolling through Gatsby’s house, Gatsby takes Daisy up to his closet and begins to boast about his expensive clothes so that Daisy realizes that Gatsby is rich, and, “He took out a pile of shirts, and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray” (92). Daisy’s desire and obsession with materialistic things is also evident because after she sees all of these shirts, she begins crying because of

    Throughout F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, location is a critical motif. The contrasts between East and West, East Egg and West Egg, and the two Eggs and New York serve important thematic roles and provide the backdrops for the main conflict. Yet, there needs to be a middle ground between each of these sites, a buffer zone, as it were; there is the great distance that separates East from West; there is the bay that separates East Egg from West Egg; and, there is the Valley of Ashes that separates Long Island from New York. The last of these is probably the most striking. Yet, the traditional literal interpretation does not serve Fitzgerald's theme as well as a more

Daisy grew up spoiled due to the vast wealth she obtained from being ‘old money’, which caused her to become selfish and self-centred. Daisy had become selfish to the point that she has an expensive and materialistic desire or want. When Gatsby shows Daisy his mansion, she gazed in awe as “she admired […] the gardens, the sparkling odor of jonquils […] and the pale gold odor of kiss-me-at-the-gate.”(Fitzgerald,97) Daisy, all along, does not have feelings for Gatsby, but more for his money and expensive possessions, as she revealed her true self during Tom and Gatsby’s argument. Daisy is selfish even if money was not involved, as she does not feel grateful for Gatsby taking the blame for her killing Myrtle Wilson. For instance, when Nick tells Gatsby about Mrytle dying, Gatsby replies “’Yes,’ he said after the moment, ‘but of course I’ll say I was.’” (Fitzgerald, 154) When Daisy cried in Gatsby’s mansion, she was crying about her actions in killing Myrtle, meanwhile she does not care about Gatsby’s act of chivalry. Furthermore, Daisy takes advantage of Gatsby by taking Tom along to Gatsby’s party, when Daisy was personally invited to essentially go alone. When Gatsby saw Tom appearing to his party, Gastby with a light temper has a conversation with Tom. He says “I know your wife’, continued Gatsby, almost aggressively.”

The settings and backdrops in The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, are essential elements to the formation of the characters, symbolic imagery and the overall plot development. Fitzgerald uses East and West Egg communities to portray two separate worlds and two classes of people that are technically the same their status, but fundamentally different in their ideals. The physical geography of the settings is representative of the distance between classes of the East and West Eggers. Every setting connotes a different tone and enhances the imagery of story line. From the wealthy class of the "eggs", the desolate "valley of ashes", to the chaos of Manhattan. The imagery provided by Fitzgerald becomes an important

The East Egg represented the East Eggers or “the aristocrats” (Fitzgerald 8) with, “Old Money.” Whom were already established in wealth through family. The Physical setting of the East Eggers homes is quote “not as fashionable” (Fitzgerald 7) and of possessing “wide lawns and friendly trees” (Fitzgerald 7). While the West Egg represented the West Eggers or the people with the “Young money”. Jay Gatsby is the perfect expression of the setting West Egg, rising above the classes all on his own and is filthy rich and boisterous. Fitzgerald uses this setting and the setting of West Egg to show a new generation of wealthy, a type of wealthy that feel obligated to live lavish lives in order to belong. This setting of the Eggs were also used to symbolize Gatsby’s not quite completion of the American Dream. See although he has the money to live in the East Egg, Fitzgerald still leaves him in West Egg. Suggesting that his dream still has not yet come to fruition, and because of this he is now separated from his love, by not only distance but in stature and class. This continues to feed his lust to advance towards the next class and complete “His dream”.