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What Is The Similarities Between The Great Gatsby And The Queen Of Versailles

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Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau once wrote, ‘'Money buys everything, except morality and citizens.'’ Many people, especially nowadays, have this notion that the more money they obtain, the happier they’ll be. Of course, that’s not always true. There have been several instances, in literature and this world, where that’s not always the case. There are some differences between F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Lauren Greenfield’s The Queen of Versailles. However, there are similarities in the way wealth was portrayed and how it won’t always lead to true happiness, but could end up causing unhappiness and pain. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Lauren Greenfield’s The Queen of Versailles both portray an obsession with …show more content…

Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Lauren Greenfield’s The Queen of Versailles both illustrate how not everything is attainable by wealth, and that things will not always end well. In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby tried to obtain happiness and love using his wealth, and how it in the end it wasn’t enough for them. “He had come such a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close he could hardly fail to grasp it. But what he did not know was that it was already behind him, somewhere in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night," (Fitzgerald 180). Gatsby had thought that his wealth was enough to lure Daisy in, but his dream had ultimately eluded his grasp and he had achieved only tragedy. In the Queen of Versailles, the Siegels were obsessed with money. It was their way of showing off, their way of being “happy”. But they relied on it too much and ended up losing a lot of it. “...we were on top of the world, building the largest home in America. Everything was wonderful, no worries in the world.If I remember, you said why am I building that large home? And I think I said, ‘Because I can.’ A lot of things have changed in the last two years. So this is kind of like a reverse of a rags-to-riches story. This is almost like a riches-to-rags story,” (The Queen of Versailles 01:23:21-52). The Siegels were so used to having so much money at their disposal, and being able to do whatever they wanted with it, this became their way of living; they didn’t know how to survive with anything less. But once they stopped receiving the money and much of it was being taken away from them, it was kind of a shock for them and they just couldn’t deal with it properly. At the conclusion, both the Siegels and Gatsby had encountered a situation in which their money was not enough to help them with their cases, and eventually made things

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