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Great Gatsby Selfish

Decent Essays

Do you ever think if you struck it rich your life would be wonderful? Well, it might be if you live a solitary life, but if you are planning on living a happy rich life with many friends…forget about it! Money is not capable of buying true friendship from people.

In “The Great Gatsby”, there is new money and old money. New money refers to people who are new to wealth and old money refers to families that have been wealthy for a long time. Both new and old money people are in the same class, but the two types of people behave differently and spend their money differently. Mr. Jay Gatsby is a new money person. Gatsby flashes his money around, which is very foolish. He does this by constantly throwing extravagant parties to impress people, travelling around in a fancy yellow Rolls-Royce, and living in an …show more content…

“Why, my God! They used to go there by the hundreds.” He took off his glasses and wiped them again, outside and in. “The poor soon-of-a-b***h,” he said. (Fitzgerald 175)

What Fitzgerald is ultimately trying to say about money and materialism is that pursuing money and material objects does not necessarily result in happiness—especially if you do not spend wisely. Daisy realizes her mistake that she should have stayed with Gatsby to have love, happiness, and wealth instead of becoming unhappy and rich with Tom. ”Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily. ‘They’re such beautiful shirts,’ she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. ‘It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts before.’ (Fitzgerald 92)

After all, the rise and fall of Mr. Jay Gatsby is a perfect example of how living in a prosperous, material item abundant, wealthy life means you will have very few “real friends”. Out of all the hundreds and hundreds of people that regularly attended Jay’s flamboyant expensive alcohol-filled parties only 6 people who cared about Jay attended his

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