Social Stratification In The Great Gatsby

The emerging inequitable class systems and antagonisms of the nineteen twenties saw the traditional order and moral values challenged, as well as the creation of great wealth for few and poverty for many. The Great Gatsby, written by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, explores the causes and effects of the unbalanced class structures. Fitzgerald outlines the idea that the desire to accumulate wealth and status is a common ambition amongst the lower classes; when that desire is reached, the traditional upper class is challenged by the emerging newly wealthy, which finally leads to destructive consequences. By creating rigid class structures, traditional upper class, new wealth, and the poor in The Great Gatsby, it is

Many novels are written as a means of scrutinising the details and flaws of a specific society. The author’s purpose is to use the novel as a lens through which they can offer their own critical perception. The highly praised novel The Great Gatsby provides such a view into 1920s America, an era which was often described as the “Jazz Age” or the “Roaring 20s,” mainly due to the +and carefree nature of the wealthy. This higher class, who were essentially safeguarded by their money, lived life as if it was an endless party. It is this particular group that F. Scott Fitzgerald mainly targets when providing his criticism

The pressures of social class tend to give us an urgency to act a certain way. In The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald, He carefully sets up his novel into wonderful agencies but, in the long run, every group has its personal issues to take care of, leaving a powerful reminder of what a precarious region the world truly is. By creating awesome social instructions which include new money, old money and the poor. Fitzgerald sends sturdy messages about the elitism running throughout society. He emphasizes the department between the social instructions and the motives in the back of why they are separated. The first and most

The "new money" people cannot be like them, and in many ways that works in their favor — those in society's highest levels are not nice people at all. They are judgmental and shallow, failing to look at the essence of the people around them (and themselves, too). Instead, they live their lives in such a way as to preserve their sense of superiority. The people with newly acquired wealth, like Gatsby’s party people, aren't necessarily much better. They attend his parties, drink his liquor, and eat his food, never once taking the time to even meet their host (they don’t even bother to wait for an invitation, they just show up). When Gatsby dies, all the people who frequented his house every week mysteriously became busy elsewhere, abandoning Gatsby when he could no longer do anything for them. One would like to think the newly wealthy would be more sensitive to the world around them. As Fitzgerald shows, however, their concerns are largely living for the moment.

Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ is set in America of the 1920’s, a predominantly materialistic society revolving around wealth and status above all else. Fitzgerald depicts this obsession with money and luxury through complicated relationships full of trouble, infidelity and sorrow. The relationships Fitzgerald portrays all symbolize the materialism and hedonism of the age; each relationship is doomed to a certain extent based on the social class of each character.

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

Music, liquor, and gold, everything you need to make a great party. And, that’s what it was, the roaring twenties, it was a never ending party of financial gain and materialism. However, there were some who viewed it to be a gilded age. They were the Lost Generation, Fitzgerald among them. After the Great War they viewed society as rotten from the inside, gilded gold while systematic problems broiled underneath. This social breakdown masked by wealth and success is nowhere better seen than in Fitzgerald’s greatest work, The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby, if anything, is excellent at exemplifying many moral shortfalls, anywhere from adultery and deceit to bootlegging and murder. The most natural and the most vile of human actions coupled with flawed and disillusioned characters constructs a perfect stage for society to crumble. Gradually, Fitzgerald takes us on a depressing journey while we watch the breakdown of modern, civil institutions.

The impact of prevailing social stratification is multi-dimensional in the novel. It is noted that social stratification has great effects on racism. We find that Tom is a racist, and his racist attitude is due to his high social status. He attacks Gatsby and questions about his fake claim of an Oxford graduate to break the intimacy between her wife Daisy and Gatsby. He knows that revealing the truth is the only way to create a negative impact on Daisy’s mind about Gatsby. Another interpretation can be taken from Tom’s behavior is that Tom shows his aristocratic, rude and arrogant attitude. Indicating Gatsby as a “bootlegger”, “Mr. Nobody”, he shows hardly any sympathy and courtesy to Gatsby. His attitude toward Gatsby in such way would be impossible if he belongs to an inferior class. Tom is also proud of his “Nordic race”. His intention is to neglect the inferior people for their skin color. He is not a man to take any change easily. He cannot think of “intermarriage between black and white” (Fitzgerald 103).

The social hierarchy is influenced by the amount of money one owns which determines whether one can attain their dream. By creating apparent social classes within ‘The Great Gatsby’ – old money, new money and no money, Fitzgerald strongly suggests that American society is intensely stigmatised. Daisy, Tom and Jordan represent the elite social class of society where despite their problems and failures they are always protected and immune by their wealth. Tom refers to Gatsby as ‘Mr Nobody from nowhere” and a “common swindler who would have to steal the ring he put on her finger” as he boasts about his hereditary wealth compared to the other distinct elite group of society who acquire their wealth through business deals, which are sometimes corrupt. Although Fitzgerald mainly attacks the rich, by making them look judgemental, superior and selfish, evidently the lower class of society are vulnerable within American society. This is shown where so many, like Myrtle,

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

Throughout what is commonly known as “The Jazz Age”, the social class system was highly important and in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, “May Day”, he proves this by portraying how the different roles between social classes exist separately and how they cross paths in New York City on May 1st, 1919. Fitzgerald introduces Jewel Hudson, Gus Rose and Carrol Key as members of the lower class and shows how they are treated differently than the members of the upper class such as Phillip Dean, Peter Himmel, and Edith Bradin. However, Gordon Sterrett finds himself suddenly struggling to keep up with his proper role in the upper class due to financial issues and he feels the ramifications of this change. “May Day” showcases how the upper class and

Social groups are the separation of two sectors of people by some dividing characteristic of each. In this interpretation of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, social groups can be divided by economic status, making the proper term socioeconomic groups, but the author also made a social distinction within the upper class by the method of attaining their wealth. This division will not be discussed, but the two groups, old money and new money, will be collectivised into one larger group, the rich, for this analysis of general characteristics of the upper class. In the novel, Fitzgerald focuses on the interactions of the upper class and therefore represents them in certain ways, such as exposing the prevalence of avarice by character development

“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

The Great Gatsby presents different social groups to embody and transmit the idea that each class has it’s own problems to prevail over and unhappiness transcends over all the social classes. The problems in each group, despite the social stratification, reveal the instability of the world they live in. The three classes are old money, new money, and no money in which all three believe their own rules of survival in society and enforce boundaries between social classes. Fitzgerald uses the similarities between the poor and the rich to reinforce his opinion and his characterization of the upper class.