Juxtaposition Of The Rich And The Poor In The Great Gatsby

​Nick Caraway moves from Minnesota to the West Egg neighborhood on Long Island to pursue a career in the bond industry. He lives in a tiny house wedged between large, expansive mansions. His neighbor, Jay Gatsby, is a well todo man with a mysterious past. Everyone in town knows Mr. Gatsby for his huge wild parties, but no one is quite sure where he has acquired his wealth. Across from Gatsby’s mansion, Nick’s cousin Daisy lives with her husband Tom Buchanan. Daisy and Tom have a complex relationship where neither of them are happy, but they will not separate even though both have been unfaithful. Tom has a mistress in the city whom is not unbeknownst to Daisy. Gatsby and Daisy have a romantic history from when Gatsby was in the army. This is the motivation behind Gatsby’s desire to acquire all his wealth. Gatsby throws his parties in an attempt to get Daisy’s attention, but Daisy is completely unaware that he is her neighbor until Nick brings them together. Though Nick is not a considerably wealthy man himself, his relationship to the Buchanans, and now Gatsby, are enough to keep him relevant in the social circles of East Egg and West Egg. Nick’s connection to Daisy also makes him highly attractive to Gatsby as all he wants is some form of an interaction with Daisy and involving himself with Nick is an easy way for Gatsby to make his way into Daisy’s life again. Money is power in the Great Gatsby, as it influences everyone’s status, aspirations,

Tom pursues Myrtle Wilson, a poor woman living in the industrialized ‘Valley of Ashes’ with her struggling mechanic husband. Myrtle, dissatisfied with her position in society, gladly spends Tom’s money and follows him wherever he goes. Following an attempt by Myrtle to rebel by saying Daisy’s name, Tom punches her in the face to prove that he has control. Myrtle is resigned to accept this abuse in order to get what she wants out of the relationship because she knows that anyone could easily take her place. In addition, Daisy begins seeing her former flame Jay Gatsby once she rediscovers his existence in West Egg. Gatsby, absolutely enamored with Daisy, claims to have earned all of his money and risen to the top just for her. Despite Daisy’s renewed interest in Gatsby, she dislikes his extravagant parties and West Egg, disgusted by ‘the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short cut from nothing to nothing’ (114). Daisy’s distaste for the ‘new money’ crowd sends Gatsby into a panic, and he immediately attempts to rectify his ‘mistake’ by eliminating the parties entirely, proving that Daisy is able to control him by her pretentious whims

One of the most prominent themes or messages in the book The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald has to do with the meaningless aspiration for the superlative social class and wealth. This heavy theme is displayed by three ideas including, behavior of entitlement, tangible wealth, and the thirst for acceptance among the prominent.

While wealth can be quite alluring, the power associated with it can also shape one's opinions, morals, and overall humanity. Wealth is a significant factor in determining one's position in society, thus the eagerness to obtain more is correlated with the wish to hold a higher status. The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, relates to this pursuit of riches and the social hierarchy attached to it. The story takes place during the height of the roaring 1920’s in New York City. Each character represents an economic sphere and has their own ambition for wealth; however, these characters, whether they fail or succeed, lose their humanity in the process. Fitzgerald utilizes the characters Gatsby, Myrtle, and Daisy to demonstrate that the desire for wealth leads to a process of dehumanization, in which morals and identity are displaced.

Throughout the novel The Great Gatsby, there is a constant theme present: social class. Fitzgerald makes a connection between the theme of social class, and the settings in the novel for example The Valley of Ashes which is described as a “desolate area of land” (p.21) and a “solemn dumping ground” (p.21) which is where the poor people live. The Valley of Ashes is situated between West Egg and New York, West Egg being the place where the aspiring classes are situated, which is the “less fashionable of the two” (p.8), this is where Gatsby lives. West Egg is the place of ‘new money’, Fitzgerald shows this by the idea of the main character Jay Gatsby, rumoured to be selling illegal alcohol (prohibition) which means he is quickly making vast

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”(1) This quote from the classic novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott. Fitzgerald is ironic because it’s referencing the upper class judging those of the lower class. However, clearly the theme that remains constant throughout the entire novel is the horrible moral values in people of the upper class. Fitzgerald carefully created each character a certain way to demonstrate various different flaws of the people in the upper class. For example, Fitzgerald uses Tom Buchanan to demonstrate infidelity, cruelty and brutality. Another example used by Fitzgerald is the carelessness, selfishness and

After going through the “Great War,” also known as World War I, soldiers came back home in the middle of prohibition, a time where the almost all recreational alcohol was illegal. Despite the government's intentions to protect the people from alcohol abuse, prohibition forced people to find unorthodox ways of attaining alcohol. Prohibition unofficially made people rich because so people made lots and lots of money making and selling alcohol illegally–bootlegging. This is the setting for the famous novel, The Great Gatsby. In this book, F. Scott Fitzgerald exemplifies the true corrupting nature of wealth and shows just how powerful the desire for money can be through the corruption of the American dream, Gatsby’s dream, and the main characters.

"Greed, as distinguished from honest reward for labor, leads to corruption. To fatten oneself on it is to be compromised."(Lathbury 64). Several characters in The Great Gatsby struggle with their obsessions with wealth. Their lives depend upon their money and what it can do for them. These obsessions lead to greed, and to the corruption of relationships and lives. In F. Scott Fitzgerald 's The Great Gatsby, the obsession with wealth leads to issues for many characters.

Shipler also depicts the difference in the experiences of the wealthy and the poor. “The poor have less control than the affluent over their private decisions, less insulation from the cold machinery of government, less agility to navigate around the pitfalls of a frenetic world driven by competition. Their personal mistakes have larger consequences, and their personal achievements yield smaller returns” (Shipler 7). Shipler clearly defines a major difference between the wealthy and the poor. For the wealthy, there exists a sense of control, of safety, and of agency in that their resources provide them with “insulation” and “agility.” However for the poor, no such safety net exists because without a reserve of emergency funding, even the smallest

Does having a substantial amount of money truly make one rich? In The Great Gatsby, the author writes the main character, Jay Gatsby to be some millionaire with the dream lifestyle. Little do the readers know, he is no rich man. In life, money can not make one truly happy. Gatsby’s life throughout the book is not an example of the “american dream”, to be happy in life one needs family, and love.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the finest American authors of the twentieth century wrote The Great Gatsby during the Jazz Age to critique the distortion of the American dream, and his work has lasted long past his lifetime. Fitzgerald discusses the nature of love and wealth and stresses the importance of defining a person beyond their external position. In his novel, letter to his daughter, and the screenplay adapted from the novel, it is clear that F. Scott Fitzgerald utilizes exposition, narration, and imagery to illustrate how people in the 1920s did not understand the meaning of true love and worried about superficial characteristics, thus resulting in the corruption of the American dream from the pursuit of true love and equality to the pursuit of wealth and discrimination; however, he moralizes that human beings are capable of emotional growth and of escaping the illusion of wealth.

Money is essential for survival; it can bring happiness, despair, or corruption. It rules our daily lives, is preferred in large amounts, and separates us into different social classes. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, is a perfect example of this since the class structure within the novel, portrays how money or the need for it can cause corruption in all the different social classes. This is shown through the three distinct classes: old money represented by the Buchanan’s and their self-centered, racist nature, new money represented by Gatsby and his mysterious, illegal ways, and a class that can be called no money represented by the Wilson’s and their attempts at

In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald the rich are hollow and selfish who repeatedly have “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together” (Fitzgerald 136). Cover #1 Among The Ash Heaps And Millionaires perfectly illustrates this. This cover alludes to the hollowness of the rich through the flowing white cloth in the air, the empty faces, and the polluting train.

In the award winning book, The Great Gatsby, some of the characters are unsatisfied with their lives, whether they were rich or poor, employed or jobless, had a good reputation, or bad, their families, and even their personal histories. Those who have read the excellently written book, most of the characters are pretty wealthy. People tend to think that happiness if having what they want physically, like goods and money. But even the wealthiest people tend to be depressed or unhappy with the life they have. Characters in that category include Mr. Wilson, Daisy, and Mr. Gatsby himself. Happiness isn’t acquired by wealth, it’s acquired by love and being able to be content and stable with their daily lives.

The Roaring Twenties, or the Jazz Age, was a period characterized by post-war euphoria, prosperity, profligacy, and cultural dynamism. There were significant changes in lifestyle and culture in the 1920s; many found opportunities to rise to affluence, which resulted in groups of newly rich people, such as the hero of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby. Set in this booming era, the novel portrays the lavish and reckless lifestyle of the wealthy and elite. With the aristocratic upper class in the East Egg and the nouveau riche in the West Egg, people are divided into distinct social classes. Contrasting the two groups’ conflicting values, Fitzgerald reveals the ugliness and moral decay beneath