Social Status In The Great Gatsby

The complex social hierarchy of America in the Twenties is a major factor in the lives of the characters in The Great Gatsby, especially Gatsby himself. From the time he falls in love with Daisy, Gatsby strives to ascend into her social class so that he will be worthy of her. The narrator tells us, “He let her believe that he was a person from much the same stratum as herself – that he was fully able to take care of her” (Fitzgerald 149). From then on, everything he does is driven by this desire to break

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

One of the major topics explored in The Great Gatsby is the sociology of wealth, specifically, how the newly minted millionaires of the 1920s differ from and relate to the old aristocracy of the country’s richest families. In the novel, West Egg and its denizens represent the newly rich, while East Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom, represent the old aristocracy. Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and taste. Gatsby, for example, lives in a monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-Royce,

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.

The ‘American Dream’; a thirst for wealth and success. Many want it, but few end up succeeding in achieving full success. Jay Gatsby, from The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a fictitious version of someone who achieved success, and demonstrated his goals even from an early age. “Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something.” (Fitzgerald, 116) Says Mr. Gatz, who was Jay Gatsby’s father. This quote demonstrates how Gatsby had always planned to become successful, even when he was at a young age. Another one of Gatsby’s ambitions is Daisy. Even though Daisy is married to Tom, he sets his hopes high as she is the love of his life. “He hadn't once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of stairs.” (Fitzgerald, 91) This quote demonstrates how infatuated Gatsby is with Daisy. He set his hopes so high that he wanted to be with somebody who is ‘Old Money’, which is perceived as a higher class; and, the person that

The “Roaring Twenties” indeed did roar. The decade, all at once spilling over with wealth and bursting at the seams with change, was experiencing an identity crisis. The nation had run out of the frontier that so romantically characterized it for its entire history, and was fresh out of a bloodier, different kind of war. America was in the middle of a vast reinvention, of its economy, its social classes, and its “American Dream.” In the midst of the chaos was writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, a cultural apex in and of himself, and his crowning achievement: The Great Gatsby, a brief novel glorified by historians and teachers alike. Gatsby contains more substance than a mere love story; it is a criticism and very real description of the schism that arose in the 1920s: a sudden appearance of a relatively new social class, one characterized by hard-working, ladder-climbing, sometimes-bootlegging American dreamers. This new-money status was mirrored by the American aristocracy,

The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a heart wrenching story about a man named Gatsby, who spends most of his life trying to uphold the American Dream, so that one day when his lover Daisy and him meet again they will be together forever because in his eyes, he is nothing without her. Throughout Gatsby’s life he has come to the idea that money can buy happiness such as Daisy’s love. Although when Gatsby dies at the end of the story Daisy acts as if she never loved him and that he didn’t even exist. The path a person chooses to live their life is now classified by the upper and the lower class of society, and the upper class is lacking integrity, faithfulness, and the ability to love beyond the materialistic

Money is the most important creation in human history. It is the key factor in the creation of modern society: the people with more money are the elite and the ones with less, the plebeians. In “A Critical Social Work Response To Wealth and Income Inequality”, Christine Morley and Phillip Ablett argue that money affects people’s social class and their interactions with others. This is evident in The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, through the relationship of Tom and Gatsby. People inertly judge others based on their wealth because they have this mentality instilled in them through their education. Education, as Ablett and Morley argue, is, in fact, the root cause of social inequality.

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.

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.

“ Society does not consists of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations , the relations within which these individuals stand.” ( Karl Marx). This quote ties into what Fitzgerald is trying to say about social structure because he’s saying that we together as a society come from the same person that we should all stand together. In the book The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald uses Irony , conflicts , and symbolism to develop the theme , Social structure of the 1920s. Fitzgerald uses those three literary elements to help the reader understand the book better.

“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.

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