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Free Great Gatsby Essays: Money Doesn T Buy Happiness

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Money can't buy happiness, so the cliche goes. Ross Gittins’ 2014 article “Money can buy happiness, but not as much as we think,” asserts that most people haven’t found happiness through money because they didn’t know “how to get more satisfaction from spending” (Gittins). I disagree, to a point. In the beginning, money can provide a short term cushion of happiness, but overtime, staying comfortable isn’t the same as being truly happy. I believe that long term happiness is not a matter of how you use your money, but rather a matter of why. Money is rather a means to an end, and it is this end that determines one’s happiness. Finding what will truly make you happy determines whether or not money plays a role in your happiness.
Some people, …show more content…

Both Gatsby and Buchanan realize that Daisy’s heart belongs to the wealthiest suitor, however only Gatsby finds happiness in his time with Daisy, however fleeting, because he is using his money to achieve something beyond material belongings. Gatsby has broken laws and done business with gangsters to attain wealth as quickly as possible for Daisy because she was the only girl who had ever brought him happiness. Years of dedicating his life to making money culminated to one kiss, and it was everything he had dreamed it would be. “He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God”(Fitzgerald 111). This feeling is all that Gatsby had ever wanted, this feeling is true happiness and Buchanan would never understand it because he uses his fortune for low motives that reflect his negligible concern for others.
The relationship between money and happiness isn’t as direct as the cliche suggests; every individual’s perception of happiness determines whether or not money can buy

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