Theme Of Oppression In The Great Gatsby

Myrtle yearns to be with Tom and live in his wealth but is prevented from doing so by Tom and Daisy. For instance, when Daisy tries to leave Tom for Gatsby, Tom does not exactly dismiss Myrtle, “…but there is no question that she would eventually be discarded” (Donaldson). Myrtle is so infatuated with Tom, she forgot that he can just as well choose Daisy over her. He has the upper hand, as a rich man with control over women especially when it comes to his relationships. While to Tom, Myrtle’s gender has made her just one of his possessions, to Myrtle, Tom’s rich and high status as a man has made him her only path to a higher class. Due to her infatuation with Tom, she often becomes jealous and possessive when she finds a threat to their relationship. Myrtle is so overcome with desire for Tom that she cannot stand the thought of him with another women. Even when she sees Tom in the car with Jordan Baker, Myrtle’s, “… eyes, wide with jealous terror, were fixed not on Tom, but on Jordan Baker, whom she too to be his wife” (Fitzgerald 125). Myrtle is so convinced that Tom is hers, when in reality, she is really Tom’s. Myrtle has almost forgotten the fact that as an inferior women, she has little control over the situation. The reality is that Tom was in control of the relationship and used Myrtle for his lustrous desires. Tom’s rejection of Myrtle causes her to become overrun with jealousy. In

There are many different problems and situations that affected many Americans during the time period of The Great Gatsby. The different problems affect many characters lives and relationships throughout the novel in a variety of situations. Such problems with characters personal lives would be the withering of a American dream. Also, such situations during this time period is how characters aren’t achieving their highest potential and achieving their dreams. Another problem during this time period would be the very unequal wealth distribution in America, but also among all the characters families and themselves individually in The Great Gatsby. There is new money, old money, and the poor which is represented by the valley of ashes throughout this time period. Also, among the rich and poor there is always those who want more and more and are always greedy at every point in the story. Even though characters want all the money they can get there hands on they also try there hardest to achieve enough love and romance in there lives that their heart desires. Lastly, there is a great deal of betrayal throughout the entire length of the novel The Great Gatsby. It is represented by many characters, their relationships, and their personal lives. Different characters’ personal relationships and personal lives give well-distinguished representations of the problems such as a withering American dream, unequal wealth distribution in America, and betrayal in The Great Gatsby.

Themes of hope, success, and wealth overpower The Great Gatsby, leaving the reader with a new way to look at the roaring twenties, showing that not everything was good in this era. F. Scott Fitzgerald creates the characters in this book to live and recreate past memories and relationships. This was evident with Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship, Tom and Daisy’s struggling marriage, and Gatsby expecting so much of Daisy and wanting her to be the person she once was. The theme of this novel is to acknowledge the past, but do not recreate and live in the past because then you will not be living in the present, taking advantage of new opportunities.

Mrs. Myrtle Wilson's reality was that she was a lower class, somewhat undesirable woman who dreamed that she could somehow elevate her status. The fantasy world that she created when she was with Tom lasted only momentarily and reality hit her mercilessly. Her desire to be a part of the elite class compromised her integrity; she was so desperate to fit in that accepted whatever treatment Tom was giving her. Chasing a painful dream and allowing herself to be abused, reality still had not sunk in for Myrtle when Tom broke her nose when she said what he did not want to hear (Fitzgerald, 41). She was married to a gas attendant, whom she did not appreciate, who was nothing like Tom and could not provide her with the lifestyle she yearned for. She blatantly disrespected him in conversation with her sister and Nick, saying, "I thought he knew something about breeding but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe (Fitzgerald, 39)." Each time Tom picked

True love is seen through a relationship of two people. Love exists when two people give all their trust, loyalty, and support to one another. Now imagine finding out all of the love and loyalty was false? Betraying a loved one can make someone capable of things they didn’t even know they were capable of. Betrayal is the breaking of a trust that produces moral and psychological conflict within a relationship amongst individuals. In The Great Gatsby, characters pursue in the action of having an affair and the result of betraying their loved ones. In the book, The Great Gatsby, the concept of true love is portrayed in a way that negatively affects the characters.

The Great Gatsby follows Nick Carraway as he leaves the Midwest and comes to New York City in 1922, an era of loosening morals, jazz and bootlegging. Chasing his own American Dream Nick ends up living next door to a mysterious, party throwing millionaire, Jay Gatsby and across the bay from his cousin, Daisy and her husband, Tom Buchanan. Throughout the novel there is a theme of Racism and Anti-Semitism. Racism and Anti-Semitism in the 1920s will greatly influence the ideas of Tom Buchanan and Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby.

Myrtle also adds to this stigma. She longs for a life that is fun and glamorous, but reality is she is the wife of a pump mechanic, meaning she will never have access to mobility in class or status. She is a lower class woman, which led her to engage in an affair with Tom Buchanan; it is the closest she will come to feeling higher up socially. Myrtle will do just about anything to be a part of the upper class despite the consequences. There was even a point in time when Tom physically hits her, breaking her nose and yet she still stayed with him just to continue lavishing in this fantasy she so eagerly wanted to become real (Fitzgerald, pg 37). That scene and the dynamic of her and Tom represent the subordination of the lower class and the mistreatment of women within the lower class.

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.

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

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.

She aches to be part of an elite class like Daisy, but instead, she is married to a man who is hard working and honest but does not have the passion that she craves. Wilson, Myrtle's dumb witted husband, owns a garage. Because Wilson is a passive aggressive character, he does not want to admit to himself that his wife would cheat on him, even though Tom makes it apparent that Myrtle is more his wife or "property" than she will ever be to Wilson. For example, when Tom visits Myrtle at the garage Myrtle orders Wilson to fetch some chairs while she gives her true lover a warm greeting.

When it comes with the law, justice, and order to justify someone’s death; there is always a person who is the one to cause the death, in this case, Gatsby is the one who dies. However, his death was left uncertain because it’s uncertain on who caused his death. In The Great Gatsby, by Scott Fitzgerald, the death of Gatsby and the responsibility that lead up till his demise is due to Gatsby’s entrapment in his dream world, Daisy’s Selfish wants for Gatsby’s possessions, and Tom’s perspective towards Gatsby.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a story that has many different themes. Fitzgerald shows the themes that he uses through his character’s desires and actions. This novel has themes in it that we deal with in our everyday life. It has themes that deal with our personal lives and themes that deal with what’s right and what’s wrong. There are also themes that have to do with materialistic items that we deal desire on a daily basis. Fitzgerald focuses on the themes of corrupted love, immorality, and the American Dream in order to tell a story that is entertaining to his readers.

In The Great Gatsby, Myrtle is given no respect and is being treated like an object. This happened in the chapter 2 when Tom takes Nick and Myrtle to party in a hotel in New York with others. Later in the party Myrtle and Tom comes out of a room arguing about Daisy.“Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing, in impassioned voices, whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy's name. I’ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! And Da-” Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.” This quote explains how women like myrtle are being abused by Tom and he is treating her like an object despite not having a healthy relationship. This paragraph is important because it talks about how in F. Scott’s novel The Great Gatsby Myrtle is given no respect and is being treated like an object despite being a women.

Looking at F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby through a feminist perspective, it’s apparent the text supports and challenges the assumptions of a patriarchal society. Interrogating this text with a critical feminist viewpoint reveals the men and women appear to be victims of social and cultural norms of the 1920s, which were firmly entrenched. However, some of the characters attempt to redefine these, especially the women in order to renegotiate the gender norms. Jordan resists social pressure to conform to feminine expectations and, despite Daisy and Myrtle living more traditionally, they are both willing to have affairs. The female characters approach feminism in a multitude of ways, representing different layers of narrative voices through a time of a feminist movement.