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The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald Essay

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Consumption and materialism were both taken to new and extreme heights on the eastern coast of America in the Roaring Twenties. Consumption, and especially materialism were always hallmarks of the elite upper class aristocracy of any culture in any time period, but with the new technology, urbanization, the consolidation of funds via the world stock market, and a brand new breed of elite, called millionaires, evolved the upper class culture beyond anything any human had seen before. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald imbues a story with many themes and qualities from his own life, reflected in the parallels between his own history and that of Gatsby and Nick Carraway. With new, unbridled, booming economic growth, what started as the Great American Dream became a vulgar, empty, greedy pursuit of material goods. On top of this rise in national wealth, the addition of disillusioned World War I veterans looking to grab the American Dream and use it to hoist themselves up in the world, and the 18th Amendment’s creation of a thriving and powerful organized criminal underworld gave birth to a new America, with unprecedented levels of consumption and wealth. East and West Egg is aptly named, as they symbolize the old aristocracy and the new, fresh millionaires which are two sides of the same solid gold coin- the absurdly wealthy. The difference between the two is based in the social ties and moral values held by the old aristocracy that contrast the materialism

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