Tom and Gatsby, the perfect foils of each other?

The motif of greed is shown in The Great Gatsby through the attitude and actions of the characters. In Fitzgerald’s iconic story of the Roaring Twenties, greed is not a character flaw, but an essential way of life. Tom Buchanan has no problem displaying his wealth, and Nick Carraway notices a “touch of paternal contempt” in his voice when speaking to others (20). Tom Buchanan speaks in a parental tone as though he has the right to speak down to people. He has such a strong greed for power that he uses his wealth to put him above everyone else (Lockridge, 34).

“You look so cool…you always look so cool”, Daisy Buchanan dotingly admitted to Jay Gatsby (Fitzgerald, 118). The two are F. Scott Fitzgerald’s central characters in his 1925 classic The Great Gatsby, a tale of disillusionment and ill-fated dreams. Fitzgerald first depicts Daisy and Gatsby as enigmatic, complex characters. Later, however, he reveals them as corrupt. But this contrast is not merely a literary device—Fitzgerald uses his characters to prove that members of the Roaring Twenties were corrupt and deluded and that the “American Dream” is hopelessly unattainable.

During the 1920s, many people thought money was the key to happiness. They thought money could only have a positive impact on their lives and keep them content. However, these people neglected to realize the negative effects that wealth would have on both themselves and the large impact that it has on society. Amidst their joy, they were unable to see that and wealth does more harm than it does good. F.Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, illustrates his perspective on the 1920s. This story takes place on Long Island in the Summer of 1922 and follows the life of narrator Nick Carraway and the many interesting encounters he has with his friends, such as Jay Gatsby as well as Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Fitzgerald is able to convey these negative

Fitzgerald displays Gatsby as man who came from nothing, with an unrelenting passion to obtain material success, or the 1920’s American Dream. Radical transformation was one of Mr. Gatsby’s most outstanding characteristics, taking his desire to change from the once impoverished man to the point of changing his name. Certainly Gatsby possesses admirable traits, as his will power is once again displayed through the longing for his lost love, Daisy. The misconceptions of the time period are illustrated as Fitzgerald displays that Gatsby’s underlying desire for money is to win over Daisy through impressing her with his wealth. Within Adam Cohen’s piece “Jay Gatsby Is a Man for Our Times”, Cohen discusses the worthiness of Gatsby’s goal: “The callow Daisy, whose voice is ‘full of money,’ may not be a worthy goal. But Gatsby’s longing for her, and his willingness to sell his soul to pursue her, are the purest thing in this sordid tale.” Essentially, Fitzgerald demonstrates that Gatsby, nor his relentless will to succeed, are not the issue. It is the time period, along with the misconceptions of a dream, which corrupt the character. Gatsby’s wealth is obtained through unethical ways, like many others who followed the path of easy money. The corruption of bonds does bring Gatsby the wealth he had always longed for, along with extravagant and lavish parties at his mansion. Consequently, we learn that reaching the goal of obtaining wealth ultimately does not lead to

As Jay Gatsby enters his life, it slowly begins to crumble, as his wife enters an affair with another man (Gatsby), his Mistress is moving away, and he is being told by this man whom he just met that his wife never loved him. Although, just because a character is protective does not mean that they are a good person. Tom’s actions directly lead to the murder of Jay Gatsby, and he is cheating on his wife. Tom is the most protective of what he has and is quite conservative when it comes to any changes in his life, since he see’s his life before his run-ins with Gatsby to be

Jay Gatsby is a self-made man, he turned himself from a farm boy to one of the richest men in America at the time and bought himself a beautiful mansion on West Egg, Long Island with the other new millionaires. In contrast to the newly rich, there is those who have inherited their wealth from family before them such as Tom and Daisy Buchanan. These people were lucky to be born into their lives and reside on East Egg along with other family’s with “old money”. Readers come to easily identify that despite their different

The culture of the wealthy Americans represented in The Great Gatsby was defined mainly by consumerism and excessive material wealth. Wherever given the opportunity, Jay Gatsby went over the top, as shown in his flamboyant style of dress and his huge mansion where he throws lavish parties. This is actually not all that different from Fitzgerald’s life. After his first work was published to great fanfare, Fitzgerald was the talk of the town. As was the case with Gatzby, many of those around him did not – and never would – actually know Fitzgerald. They wished merely to be close to someone famous. Fitzgerald shunned all the attention, eventually moving to France. It was there that he looked at the supposed American Dream from a different perspective. To Fitzgerald, it was clear that the sudden wealth that many Americans began to acquire caused leisure and idleness to replace traditional ethics like hard work as qualities that were admired. (Decker, 28) Certainly the Buchanans and Gatsby cared little about hard work once they had achieved their material goals.

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,

The 1920’s was an interesting time where social and political ideas were changing; women gained the right to vote, the jazz age created a large popularity in music and dancing, but most importantly, wealth became a new way to express one’s class in a society as people moved from rural areas to cities. The Great Gatsby is a significant example that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in order to show how one’s wealth can affect the people they meet and the way people treat each other. Along with wealth, this book is about love, both from the past and from the present, that soon twists into a tragedy when Gatsby was killed while protecting the other, all in the name of love. Everything Gatsby did was to impress or protect Daisy because he was deeply

The Great Gatsby is told by Nick Carraway, who narrates what he sees when he moves by his cousin Daisy and Gatsby. Gatsby attempts an unachievable goal which is winning Daisy’s love back through money and power, even though Daisy is married to Tom. He desired to win her love by being prosperous, but he became wealthy by committing crimes. But what keeps him different, as Nick Carraway thinks, is that he is naive, self-importance, and passionate yet ludicrous. “Gatsby has "something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life" , and "an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person" , but Tom has a hard mouth and supercilious manner, two shining arrogant eyes, and a cruel body.” As compared to Tom, Daisy’s husband, Gatsby isn’t all that great of a person. He had one objective and did anything he could to reach that; Tom was naturally prosperous and got his way with no trouble.

In a world where wealth determines power, the character, Tom Buchanan, is an exemplary model of the American dream and how it is unattainable. Tom represents a lifestyle which is becoming increasingly more common, especially in the United States. In today’s society, infidelity is becoming more and more acceptable to each generation. F. Scott Fitzgerald could see this happening to society around him, and he, in turn, created Tom Buchanan, in “The Great Gatsby” to illustrate that ideology that was slowly becoming acceptable and portray it in its true and repulsive form.

The “Roaring 20’s” was a time period where material and wealth mattered even more to people. Greed consumed people and the thrill of the time devoured people as well. Parties occurred daily and wealthy members of society appeared out of nowhere. The American Dream, of what once was a dream of self, became corrupted. The opportunity to be oneself became the opportunity to become rich and powerful. The novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald exemplifies the corruption of the American Dream. Jay Gatsby, an upper-class member of society, allows the thrill of the American Dream to take over his life and determine his actions, in his extravagant plan of winning back his old love, Daisy. This corruption of the American Dream destroys not only his ideals and inevitably, his life but also sabotages Daisy as well. Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby’s versions of the American Dream are a true example of the hold and destruction that the American Dream had on people. Fitzgerald’s way of incorporating the American Dream reflects the truth behind the dream and shows the damage that it did to millions of people during the Jazz Age. The Great Gatsby is a criticism of the American Dream and how monetary greed and excess destroy the characters’ attempts to find true happiness.

In the period of the 1920’s, there was a certain status of wealth that was difficult to achieve. There were two societal classes consisting of those with wealth from prior generations, and those who worked to earn it themselves. Tom, Daisy, and Nick, who represented the old money society did not have to work hard, unlike Gatsby which he represented the new money and they had to work to earn money. People like Gatsby, who gained their wealth on their own often fought for the approval from the upper class who inherited their wealth. Rather than having new money and old money, people who tried achieving the American Dream and ended up in failure usually they end up like George and Myrtle Wilson In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the notion that social norms in the upper class depict the idea that being apart of it was impossible unless they were born in it was expressed through Daisy’s rejection of Gatsby because of the corrupt way in which he gained his wealth, making his American Dream unattainable.

Through Fitzgerald’s characterisation of the protagonists, the moral chaos within the society becomes evident, with a society of immense greed and wealth being born, revealing the dreaded materialistic trait within individuals in the society leading to drastic consequences. Similarly to the prodigious increase in wealth during the “roaring 20’s”, the luxurious society of New York revolves heavily around money, with “the rich getting richer and the poor getting children”. The materialistic trait is evident within the protagonist Daisy Buchanan - ‘a careless person”. We learn of Daisy’s materialistic behaviour through her decision to marry Tom Buchanan over Jay Gatsby “because she was

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,