Social Status In The Great Gatsby

The American Dream, the idea that anybody can be successful through hard work and dedication, has been a driving force in the American history. However, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby and Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun express the notion that the Dream itself is defined differently to different people. The American Dream is not the same for everybody, it is instead an idealistic achievement that changes based on who is driving themselves towards the Dream. Success through the Dream, therefore, is defined by the Dreamers themselves. In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby achieves materialistic wealth, but that wealth is not enough to fulfill his definition of the Dream. Gatsby’s idea of success is to gain respect from others and to receive love back from the women he loves - Daisy. A Raisin in the Sun’s Walter Younger, on the other hand, desires wealth, and struggles utilizing the Dream’s ideals to attain said wealth. His definition of success revolves around a stable income that would allow him and his family a comfortable lifestyle where money is not as big an issue. Both Gatsby and Walter’s experiences and the polar differences in their Dream’s definitions reveals that the success of one’s Dream is based heavily on the person themselves and not measurable by tangible aspects such as wealth or respect.

The definition of the American dream has evolved into different meanings as the years have passed. However, one common aspect that all Americans strive for is to be respected from society. To be respected by society implies that a person is appreciated and known for his or her accomplishments and individuality. In the The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, the idea of the American Dream is portrayed evidently in both timeless classics. The American Dream is the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success through hard work and gain respect from society for those achievements. Jay Gatsby desires respect from wealthy socialites for his achievements in attaining wealth while Walter Lee Younger despairingly hopes to be respected by his family members. Although both characters chase the American Dream of being respected Fitzgerald’s Gatsby does not achieve the American Dream in contrast to Hansberry’s Walter, who does achieve the American Dream due to the differences in the two character's acceptance by society or loved ones.

The definition of the American dream has evolved into different interpretations over time. However, one common aspect that all Americans strive for is to be respected by society. To be respected by society implies that a person is appreciated, known for his or her accomplishments and individuality. In the The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, the idea of the American Dream is portrayed evidently. The American Dream is the ideal that every US citizen has an equal opportunity to achieve success through hard work and gain respect from society for those achievements. Jay Gatsby desires respect from wealthy socialites for his achievements in attaining wealth while Walter Lee Younger despairingly

The idea of American Dream as presented by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Great Gatsby novel involves rising from poverty or rags to richness and wealthy. The American Dream exemplifies that elements such as race, gender, and ethnicity are valueless as they do not influence the ability of an individual to rise to power and richness. This American Dream makes the assumption that concepts such as xenophobia are non-existent in America a concept that is not true and shows vagueness of the American Dream. In his novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the Great Gatsby to demonstrate the overall idea of living the American dream. Gatsby leaves his small village of farmers and manages to work his way up the ladder although some of the money he uses to climb the ladder is associated with crime “He was a son of God and he must be about His Father's Business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty” (Fitzgerald 6.7). This phrase shows that Gatsby wasn’t meant for a life similar to that of his father but rather destined for greatness. However, his dream his short-lived and he doesn’t make it to the top as Daisy who is a symbol of his wealthy rejects her and a series of events transpire that result in his death before he could live his American Dream alongside everyone else who was working up the ladder to live the American Dream.

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

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.

In the period of the 1920’s, there was a certain status of wealth that was difficult to achieve. There were two societal classes consisting of those with wealth from prior generations, and those who worked to earn it themselves. Tom, Daisy, and Nick, who represented the old money society did not have to work hard, unlike Gatsby which he represented the new money and they had to work to earn money. People like Gatsby, who gained their wealth on their own often fought for the approval from the upper class who inherited their wealth. Rather than having new money and old money, people who tried achieving the American Dream and ended up in failure usually they end up like George and Myrtle Wilson In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the notion that social norms in the upper class depict the idea that being apart of it was impossible unless they were born in it was expressed through Daisy’s rejection of Gatsby because of the corrupt way in which he gained his wealth, making his American Dream unattainable.

Social classes are truly like a ladder, but that final step is by far the most difficult. Trying to become the most powerful, and successful person around it an almost impossible task, which very few will ever achieve. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby spends his entire life attempting to climb the social ladder, in order to win back his young love, Daisy Buchanan. The novel makes a naturalism argument stating that no matter how hard you try, and how much you think you’ve achieved in your life, you will most likely never be able to rise from a lower social class.

Is status more important than The American Dream? According to Gatsby that’s the case, he uses his status more than anything. The American Dream can mean many things to different people. My definition of it would be being happy, having money, and being successful in life. Fitzgerald's definition of The American Dream is being happy and having lots of money, he shows this by having the green light symbolize Gatsby's happiness with Daisy. Gatsby is also very wealthy in the book. When it comes to The Great Gatsby, status plays an important role in society and each character lives up to it. This book shows Gatsby's using status by making him the title of the book and the most well-known wealthy man in the book, shows him reaching his goals, and trying to impress Daisy with his status.

By throwing these high-class parties, Gatsby is surrounded by other high-class people. Their relationships are social standings based on labels of society rather than love between two people. A woman named Catherine attends Jay Gatsby's parties and notices the unhappiness of the couples around her. She is a friend of Daisy's and comments on Daisy's marriage, "Neither of them can stand the person they're married to" (37). She married for convenience and for money rather for love. Their marriage has become very weak and Gatsby sees it when "Daisy had told Gatsby that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw" (125). Gatsby sees the way that Daisy doesn't love Tom anymore. Yet, while he feels he has been in that position before, he accepts the fact that marriage rarely represents true love. He ignores true happiness because his wealth has become his family, and he now relies on money rather than family to bring comfort and security to

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.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is famous as one of the greatest authors of the twenties. He is referred to as a member of the "Lost Generation". His books deal with the idealism and the disillusion of the post-World-War-1 decade and also with the struggle of the American society to find spiritual happiness and material wealth (Di Bacco 525). Long describes Fitzgerald as "central to the American twenties" or "historian of the golden twenties". "He names the Jazz Age" (177). In his novel The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald describes the social circumstances in the USA in the 1920s with typical representatives of in this time existing social classes in the post-war decade.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of “The Great Gatsby” argues that surroundings dictates personality as well as social status through the comparison of the novel’s setting to the characters in different social standings. Throughout the novel, different regions of 1920s United States are shown to have an important effect on the persons, having them correspond with social mobility. This is proven by West Egg, Long Island and Gatsby, East Egg with the Buchanans and George Wilson in the valley of ashes.

The Effects of Modern Social Classification From the beginning of time, wealth has not only been the central desire in the world but the ultimate measure of success in one's life. No matter inherited or earned, new or old wealth has grown to be a dividing barrier between one and another. Money is often seen as an indicator of happiness, hard work, and luxury. However, in reality, wealth is merely a way to create a division of society based on social and economic status. To dislocate by definition means to move from its proper place or position.

“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.