The Great Gatsby: Why Are Some People Poor?

Throughout the classic The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the rich and the poor are constantly juxtaposed against each other. The rich as ployed as being colorful and full of detail, while the poor is described as being "ashes" in a "desolate" landscape. This juxtaposition of the rich and poor makes it clear to the reader that Fitzgerald wanted the distinction to be blunt. Fitzgerald adds this distinction because he wants the reader to understand that the rich and the poor lead completely different lives. The rich are described in elaborate colors and detail because the they live lavish lifestyles. The rich own extravagant mansions, expensive cars and hydroplanes, and lead exciting lifestyles. On the contrary, the poor are described in

Peter Singer defends that we “ought to prevent evil whenever we can do so without sacrificing something of comparable moral significance (Famine Relief and the Ideal Moral Code pg. 813)”. He believes that we should donate at least half of our earnings to people in absolute poverty, which in this case means poverty by any standard. He also says we should help out people in other countries before we help out our own neighbor. “The fact that a person is physically near to us, so that we have

A drop of red food coloring stains the pure white color of snow, preventing it from ever being completely white again. In The Great Gatsby, poverty represents the red food coloring. Forever marking a person as lower class, preventing them from being taken seriously in the world of the rich. Not only is money a way of distinguishing the higher class from the lower, but it was also used as a way of ensuring a part of the population held more power. This system allowed some of the members of the upper class to feel as though they were better, and more than the people lacking money. In the era that this novel was written, the money that a person was born into determined their lifestyle. In The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the poor people can never escape their poverty, showing that the class system isn’t beneficial to the lower class.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (188).

We all heard countless solutions on how to solve world poverty. In Peter Singer’s article “Rich and Poor”, he discusses how he thinks this problem can be fixed. Singer claims that we all have a responsibility to support people who are in extreme need and are suffering from absolute poverty. Singer believes that poverty could be fixed if people give up their luxuries and give the money that they spent on unnecessary things to those who are destitute. In Singer 's mind, we all have a duty to give until we are no longer able to, or until the problem with the world poverty will be solved. Singer feels that it is necessary for people who are more wealthy to help those who are less fortunate by donating money right away to organizations that help fight poverty. In his opinion, by not helping those in need we are negatively responsible for their suffering and thus failing to live a moral life.

“That persons with very low incomes may merit our sympathy is accepted, but sympathy leads to charity, rather than to the involuntary exploitation of the better off” (Narveson, 2004). Singer also says that people with a maintainable amount of wealth should give more than the X amount asked for, being that the predicament that some are not able to give or they can give less than the amount asked for. “Another, more serious reason for not giving to famine relief funds is that until there is effective population control, relieving famine merely postpone starvation” (Singer, 1972).

After going through the “Great War,” also known as World War I, soldiers came back home in the middle of prohibition, a time where the almost all recreational alcohol was illegal. Despite the government's intentions to protect the people from alcohol abuse, prohibition forced people to find unorthodox ways of attaining alcohol. Prohibition unofficially made people rich because so people made lots and lots of money making and selling alcohol illegally–bootlegging. This is the setting for the famous novel, The Great Gatsby. In this book, F. Scott Fitzgerald exemplifies the true corrupting nature of wealth and shows just how powerful the desire for money can be through the corruption of the American dream, Gatsby’s dream, and the main characters.

"Greed, as distinguished from honest reward for labor, leads to corruption. To fatten oneself on it is to be compromised."(Lathbury 64). Several characters in The Great Gatsby struggle with their obsessions with wealth. Their lives depend upon their money and what it can do for them. These obsessions lead to greed, and to the corruption of relationships and lives. In F. Scott Fitzgerald 's The Great Gatsby, the obsession with wealth leads to issues for many characters.

In third world nations, where there is a lack of infrastructure, limited resources, and fluctuating birth rates, the allocation of funds to preventing hunger would not be the best use of money. Singer’s argument would hypothetically decrease the death rate, however, it does not control for the birth rate and this would lead to overpopulation. By increasing the level of medical aid to the third world, we allow more individuals to survive. This is good for the individual, but not for all of society. Over time, given limited natural resources, overpopulation can create a burden on the environment and allows for a greater level of human suffering as the completion for resources intensified. This lack of resources is especially prevalent in the third world and combined with an even greater population, Singer’s argument could allow for an even larger problem of famine. Instead, in the short term, it would be advantageous to invest money in research, infrastructure, and developing technologies that would allow for a sustainable society given population growth. Although, in the short term, lives would be lost, as money would not be allocated to stopping hunger, from a utilitarian perspective, it would allow for the sustainability of a larger amount of lives in the future. Morally speaking, it would be better so save the

Peter Singer’s central idea focuses around how grim death and suffering from lack of food, shelter and medical care really is. He further argues that if we can prevent something this unfortunate from happening, without sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought to do it. In other words, as privileged citizens, we ought to prevent all of the death and suffering that we can from lack of food, shelter and medical care from happening by giving our money and resources to charity (Chao, 2016, in-class discussion). In the terms of this argument, death and suffering from poverty are preventable with the

Shipler also depicts the difference in the experiences of the wealthy and the poor. “The poor have less control than the affluent over their private decisions, less insulation from the cold machinery of government, less agility to navigate around the pitfalls of a frenetic world driven by competition. Their personal mistakes have larger consequences, and their personal achievements yield smaller returns” (Shipler 7). Shipler clearly defines a major difference between the wealthy and the poor. For the wealthy, there exists a sense of control, of safety, and of agency in that their resources provide them with “insulation” and “agility.” However for the poor, no such safety net exists because without a reserve of emergency funding, even the smallest

Peter Singer, a prominent moral philosopher and public intellectual, has written at length about many ethical issues. He subscribes to utilitarianism, which is the position that the best moral action is that which maximizes the well-being of conscious entities; this view is made apparent through his writings. In his essay What Should a Billionaire Give—and What Should You? Singer presents the idea that although the rich are capable of mitigating extreme poverty, there has been little improvement for the poorest 10 percent of the world’s population. He maintains that all life is equal and, therefore, saving the lives of the poor is a moral imperative for those who can afford to. “We are far from acting in accordance to that belief,”

In the article Rich and Poor, Peter Singer sees extreme poverty as “not having enough income to meet the most basic human needs for adequate food, water, shelter, clothing, sanitation, health care or education” (pg. 234). Singer does not fail to compare those in extreme poverty to people who are living in absolute affluence. He suggests that it is the responsibility of those living in affluence to help those who are in need of obtaining even the basic human needs. He also argues that the affluent not helping is the moral equivalency of murder. Singer realizes that even though the rich can give to the poor these resources that they need, the rich do not feel enough of a moral mandate to do so. I disagree a bit with Singer because he seems to suggest that everyone who has the basic necessities is morally obligated to give but, I believe that this idea of a moral mandate to give should only apply to the extremely wealthy. Like Singer’s first premises says “If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable significance, we ought to do it.” (243) If the absolute affluent have large amounts of money, they can help to at least make people live comfortably without losing anything of great significance. The increasing poverty rates, not just in America but, globally cannot be solved if the extremely wealthy continue to do wasteful spending and choose to not put their money more towards programs and charities that better the lives of the people in their

If the rich can provide some of its resources and invest into the poor. Then in the long term it will benefit all us. I agree with Hardin that we shouldn’t just give the poor money or food. Instead, the rich should help us by making schools and infrastructure because if we educate ourselves first then everything will workout better. However, there are places where we need to worry about food and health first because they are dying of hunger and diseases that could be treated.

The problem of poverty has always plagued the world, including developed countries, such as America. It is one of the main reasons that less developed countries have difficulty developing at the pace of other countries. Many different actions can cause poverty. Most people have different opinions on why poverty still exists. “Nearly equal portions of the public in advanced, emerging, and developing countries, cite the gap between the rich and the poor as a very big problem. And notably, it is the leading economic concern in the eyes of people in major economies such as China and Germany, at 42 and 39 percent, respectively, according to the new Pew Research survey. A global median of 29 percent say their government’s actions are to blame for inequality, making it the leading cause cited. People in advanced economies, in particular, believe that their governments are responsible for the rich getting richer and equally culpable for the poor becoming relatively poorer. A median of 32 percent in those nations blame government, three times the percentage that cite the failings of their educational system and double the share who blame their tax system” (Stokes). Some people that are wealthy are also greedy. Although they control a large amount of wealth, they are unwilling to share it. Although it should not be the responsibility of wealthy people to support people in poverty, it would be helpful to the advancement of society. Another contributing reason that poverty exists is