Social Classes In The Great Gatsby

In the world of The Great Gatsby, status and reputation are everything. There are two main social classes in the upper echelons of society: old money and new money. These are divided both by social norms and geographically. For instance, Daisy Buchanan, who is old money, lives in sophisticated and refined East Egg with her husband. Of their adolescence together, Daisy’s friend, Jordan Baker, remembers that, “The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to Daisy Fay’s house. She was just eighteen, two years older than me, and by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville. She dressed in white, and had a little white roadster..,” suggesting that Daisy enjoyed a privileged childhood (74). Her family is wealthy, and it has been well to do for quite some time.

At the surface level, The Great Gatsby is most renowned for the tragic love story of Jay Gatsby and Daisy. However, despite this popular understanding, it is rare to find an analysis of the underlying reasons behind their failed romance. In society, social class is a commonly used dividing factor that separates people based on income. In a similar way, the main characters of The Great Gatsby are divided into the following social classes; the old money, the newly- rich and the working class. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald utilizes social classes to create a distinct line between the rich and the poor, creating a distinct outcome to the novel due to the advantages and disadvantages of each group.

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

Everyone wants wealth. Everyone wants money. Everyone wants to get somewhere in life. However, what people don’t think about is how they change as a person when always in the demand for wealth. In the novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the demand for acquiring wealth corrupts the morals of people, shown through the indirect characterization of Daisy and her wanting to be with Gatsby, the indirect characterization of Gatsby and how he went from being poor to rich, and the color symbolism of the yellow car, symbolizing wealth and corruption. The main theme explored in The Great Gatsby is wealth, especially involving the newly rich.

The author of The Great Gatsby, Francis Scott-Fitzgerald, was born in Minnesota in 1896. He was born into a middle class family and spent most of his childhood living in New York because of his fathers job. Fitzgerald attended Princeton but did not get the chance to graduate because he enrolled into the Army. He was stationed at Fort Leavenworth and was under the influence of Dwight Eisenhower. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald portrays the life of the working class and how people's dreams of moving up in social class began to dwindle if they did not stay hopeful.

‘The Great Gatsby’ novel by F. Scott Fitzgeralds is a novel that has symbolic life lessons that have shaped my values and realities of life. This novel is about Nick Carraway, the narrator, that tells the story of Jay Gatsby a millionaire purposing the American Dream at the cost of losing himself. A key quote in the novel demonstrated the reality of wealth doesn’t define a person. But consumes them was illustrated when Carraway first saw Gatsby. “I could have sworn he was

Class structure in the 1920s was synonymous to prejudice. The 1920s was known as a period of wild excess and great parties with excitement arising from the ashes of the wars in America’s history. It was a period in history where rapid materialism and narcissistic ideals grew uncontrollably, and it was the days where Jay Gatsby, illegally, rose to success. Having social classes was the same as segregation, except it was through economic standings, the two both instil injustice within social standards. Class structure was used to describe the difference between the new money and old money. The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, written during the 1920s, emphasizes the division between the social classes and the reasons behind why they

Coining the term ‘Jazz Age’, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, a modern American writer, has skillfully portrayed the social status, and class of the Post World War I Americans, their illusive pursuit of ‘American Dream’, their luxurious and careless life style in the mode of high class society etc. in his brilliant masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. The novel is the underlying commentary regarding the ascending of the social ladder, the causes behind this, the pursuit of material wealth, how it is associated with racism and sexuality, and the reaction of the consequences. It is found in the novel that the narrator is merely a witness in a character-oriented story, and the characters do not portray the real people, but rather present the cultural and economic state in a class-based materialistic, extravagant, disillusioned, and racist American society. Fitzgerald, in characterization, divides society into various groups defined by wealth and social status and makes a queer relationship between money, love, and sex through the thematic lens of social stratification and ethnic approach.

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s use of exposition to illustrate the superficiality and flaws within Gatsby and Daisy conveys his disapproval with classism, and the letter to his daughter extends his hope for societal reform. When Gatsby insists that Daisy leave Tom to marry him, Daisy firmly postulates, “Rich girls don’t marry poor boys” (Coppola). Fitzgerald elucidates the social stratification in West Egg through Daisy’s love for materialistic items and her reluctance to marry Gatsby. Daisy is a token of the social trend to gain material and represents the twentieth century misconception

Social class plays a role in The Great Gatsby for the sense of fundamental decencies being parceled out unequally at birth. There’s a difference from being born into the money and working to be in the money shown between West Egg and East Egg. Gatz dreamt of being successful and rich, doing anything to achieve such status. Which inevitably leads to his fall for his dream of falling in love threw his life away and kills him. Social class between people is the division of where in society you stand, this division shows the unequal decencies presented by the rise and fall of Gatsby.

The Great Gatsby is a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 1920’s. This story is set on Long Island, New York, about a man Jay Gatsby who tries to repeat the past and rekindle his love with a woman named Daisy Buchanan. His affair with her, and many efforts to impress her ultimately do not act in his favor. There are three different social classes in the book, East Egg representing inherited wealth, West Egg representing new and earned wealth, and finally the Valley of Ashes representing poverty and struggle. All of these social classes help to portray the different kinds of people in the 1920’s.

Fitzgerald, in his sarcastic novel The Great Gatsby, frequently shows how racism and classism seriously influence the possibilities of achieving American dreams in obscure methods. The novel details Gatsby’s achievements and dream including Daisy, and makes comparison with other people in different races and classes indirectly but visibly. The fact that, though Gatsby is much wealthier than those in East Egg, he has never achieved the American dream, never owned Daisy truly and never acquired respect, but rumours, due he isn’t born in high class and makes money through bootleg. To some extent, the miserable end of Gatsby is the reflection of the disparity of classism. Gatsby’s mansion reminds people of the feasibility of making the American dream come true. However, his unexpected death that is not caught by police, but killed by Wilson, a white man in mid class, proves that it is related to races and classes closely. Fitzgerald takes us into the suffering of Gatsby to show us that the American dream is like a shell company, which makes everyone look forward to their future with great expectations, but only certain people can truly reach it because people are not standing on the same starting line.

Almost everything in the world we live in, depends on money. Education, work, family, and even things necessary for survival, require a certain amount of money. However, most people don’t focus on these things. Most people with wealth focus on what they want, and not what they need, nor have. In Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, wealth is a very important detail. For Jay Gatsby, his wealth is used to hold parties on a weekly basis. He buys so much stuff, for people he doesn’t seem to care about. He seems to just want to fill his house with people, with faces. For the Buchanans, wealth is something that brings cruelty and deceit. For example, Tom seems to think that Daisy loves Gatsby because of his money. He belittles Gatsby for having so much money, yet with little to no explanation for it. For Nick, money seems to be a tool, used for personal gain, and nothing more. Nick never complains about his financial status, nor does he really talk about it that often. However, he quietly listens to everyone who speaks about their own money. Money is almost a curse in this specific novel. Yet it’s portrayed as something to define who a person is.

Have you ever thought of how social and economic classes work into a capitalist system? Marxists believe that different social and economic classes should be equal. In the book the “Great Gatsby” written by F. Scott Fitzgerald these classes are very much defined and show the flaws and reality of how social and economic classes are viewed through Marxists. Viewing the classes through vulgar Marxists the characters attempting to climb social and economical ladders in the book are not accepted and rejected from upper class individuals. “The Great Gatsby” shows that people attempting to be something he or she is not does not mean they have achieved these social and economic goals and will be rejected by the very people they are attempting to

“I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth” (2). So speaks Nick in the beginning of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. This exemplifies how people born into different social classes are not born with the same character and ethics. Since people from different classes think so differently, this may cause conflicts between them and might prevent them from having substantial relationships with each other.