The Great Gatsby, And Huckleberry Finn?

“The smaller the mind, the greater the conceit,” (Aesop). Society admires people who have morals but sometimes this morality is clouded by a person’s wealth or popularity. Morality is a sense of wellbeing and knowing the differences between what is right and what is wrong. People attain their morality through being confident, being concerned about others, and caring about the world and everything in it. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan is perceived as the least moral by being conceited and having a passion to pursue this vulgar trait.

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

In the books, The Adventures Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, the authors demonstrate several themes: the coexistence of good and evil, the importance of moral education, the existence of social inequality, racism and slavery, intellectual and moral education, and the hypocrisy of “civilized” society. The common themes throughout the two books depict; that although the settings are nearly a century apart, society has not changed as drastically as believed.

Since the beginning of time, society has been separated into classes; the rulers and the ruled, the rich and the poor, the nobility and the common folk. One can find examples of social caste systems in any time period. Over time, social standards have changed, but one thing has not. Those who possess wealth are thought to also possess happiness. From the outside looking in, the common man always believes that the wealthy live happier lives. But two landmark authors portray a different story. Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations and F. Scot Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, both show that in order to be truly happy, one must reject superficial things, such as one’s position in the caste system of society, and pursue one’s true desires.

People often hesitate to accept what they do not understand. In the absence of love and compassion, it is no question that fear, ignorance, and hatred, all contribute to a melting pot of negativity in the world. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, is about the love and friendship cultivated by a young boy and a black slave on the Mississippi River. Despite the pair’s differences, they are able to endure the struggles and difficulties that the toilsome journey brings. Mark Twain, in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, emphasizes the shift in Huck’s view towards slavery by contrasting Huck’s initial tone of reflectiveness to his assertive tone, both collectively addressing the issue of racism in society.

In today’s society, people are judged by their values or are frightened to take sacrifices to better benefit their lifestyle. Characters like Gatsby, Tom, Daisy and Myrtle are shown as evidence of greed and how wealth surrounds their values. Fitzgerald uses social commentary to offer a glance of an American life in the 1920s. He carefully sets up his novel into distinct groups, but in the end, each group has its own problems to contend with, leaving powerful ideas for readers to adapt(add morals characters inhabit). By creating distinct social classes, old money, new money, and no money, Fitzgerald sends strong messages about the elitism running throughout every perspective of society. F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays characters like Nick,

natures.  He doesn't seem to be involved with what is going on , but is

Jane Austen’s Persuasion challenges the notion that one’s social class determines one’s happiness. In the novel there is the upper class, which includes Sir Walter Elliot and his family; the nouveau rich, such as Admiral Croft and Captain Wentworth; and the poor

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 American Dream is a dream in which life is fuller, better, happier and free. In the two books Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck,  each book shows the American Dream in a different way. In The Grapes of Wrath, the American Dream is shown as in illusion. That being because America is going through the Great Depression and it’s very difficult to make a living or even have food on a plate. However, in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the American Dream is shown as both an illusion and a reality. This is because Jim and Huckleberry end up escaping their old lives to find one that is better and new, but along the way they run into frauds cheating people of their own money, and other people

After a time of prosperity, the roaring 1920’s became a decade of social decay and declining moral values. The forces this erosion of ethics can be explained by a variety of theories. However, F. Scott Fitzgerald paints a convincing portrait of waning social virtue in his novel, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald portrays the nefarious effects of materialism created by the wealth-driven culture of the time. This was an era where societal values made wealth and material possessions a defining element of one’s character. The implications of the wealthy mindset and its effects on humanity are at the source of the conflict in The Great Gatsby, offering a glimpse into the despair of the 20’s. During a time

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,

Romance, love, and destiny. Connections are formed like bridges built of various things; love, trust, money, fate. Some bridges are stronger than others and some bridges connect people who perhaps shouldn’t be connected. The movie “The Great Gatsby” better expresses the romantic relationships and connections between characters. Between Tom and Daisy, whose relationship may have more to do with survival than love, with Myrtle and Tom, the bridge between them connecting two souls searching for something more in life. And then there are bridges like the one between Jordan and Nick, filled with lies and a bridge not often travelled, and if you’re lucky you come across a bridge like Gatsby and Daisy's, which is made of love but filled with obstacles. These bridges play a key part in the story and the movie most definitely does a better job at expressing these connections between characters.

“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 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.