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Money And Greed In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Decent Essays

In the novel, The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald discusses the thin dangerous line between money and greed. We are introduced to Nick Carraway our narrator, we see all the events through his eyes and all of his biased opinions. Readers are challenged and questioned on whether they agree or disagree with Fitzgerald’s claim on love and money. Fitzgerald claims that there is nothing in nature that produces happiness. Gatsby focused all of his energy on material items to gain the attention of Daisy. As we learn in The Great Gatsby money is a huge motivator and common recurring theme in the novel. Fitzgerald attempts to tell us that money does have value but it may not necessarily make people happy or get them everything they want nor …show more content…

She is easily impressed by Gatsby’s materialistic items and wealth. The overall theme of the story always comes back to wealth and social status. Fitzgerald makes continuous efforts throughout the story to highlight the fact that social status and money play an important role in the story. In Fitzgerald's world money makes the world go around. We see characters like Daisy and Gatsby pursuing visions from the future that are determined from their past. We see this in the last words of the story which brings up boats beating against the current and talks about how these boats were doomed to sink from the beginning, one can analyze this as an analogy of Gatsby and Daisy’s …show more content…

He throws large parties to compensate for his lack of friends. In the beginning sentences of the story the readers get a negative connotation of the upper class by Nick Carraway’s father “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone...just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” (p.1) This advice tells us that Nick at one point in his life thought he was more important than others by criticizing them. Materialism becomes apparent again with the thought that money can deteriorate the moral standards of people. Throughout the story, Fitzgerald describes Gatsby as having “new money” slang from the era, which means he has a desire to display his wealth extravagantly and let people know how rich he is. However, everyone around him appears to be oblivious as he throws these large parties to gain Daisy’s attention in hopes that one day she will attend his massive blowouts. This suggests that Gatsby believes the only way into Daisy’s heart is through money and material items.
When Daisy and Gatsby are together in the novel we are unclear of what Daisy is thinking and what she feels when she is around Gatsby. Infact their relationship seems very uneven, Gatsby has poured out his heart and soul for Daisy and on the other hand Daisy just shows some signs of love and affection however she does not idolize him in the same way that he does to her. In Fact we know so little

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