Fitzgerald\'s Great Gatsby Exposes Wealth and Greed in the 1920s

Great Gatsby

Reading the highly-acclaimed novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, is an excellent way in which to learn about New York City and about America in the 1920s through literature. Certainly there are scenes, characters and quotes that are exaggerated and enhanced beyond what the real world at that time represented -- which is the license that writers of fiction are afforded. But the big picture of The Great Gatsby -- beyond the star-crossed love theme between Gatsby and Daisy -- is for the most part a portrayal of a slice of Americana out of what was called "The Roaring Twenties" and the "Jazz Age," and this paper references examples and themes from Fitzgerald's novel.

The Fading of the American Dream

The novel shows that money has corrupted key characters, notably Gatsby. And the sudden wealth that led to the corruption of values and morals happened after World War I ended. The character Nick, and Gatsby, had fought in the war, and the way Fitzgerald writes it, there was disillusionment after that brutal, bloody war, and many people were just trying to make money as fast as possible. On the East Coast, the previous idea of the "American Dream," that everyone would share in good fortune was thrown out the window in favor of greed, materialism and cynicism.

There was easy money in the Twenties, partly because Prohibition opened the door to bootleggers making huge profits (and Gatsby was a bootlegger), and because the stock market was an easy game to play and make money in a hurry. Again, the original American Dream was being shattered because the Dream originally meant that everyone was treated equally had an fair chance to live well, to enjoy middle class earnings and values, but the newly wealthy thought only of themselves and lived as lavishly as possible. Also, the discrimination against Jews and African-Americans presented in the book was a relevant depiction of how the upper crust in New York and the East Coast of America apparently looked down on others.

Meanwhile, as to New York City in the novel, Fitzgerald creates a very vivid picture of the big city and its pulse, and he does it through the narrator, Nick Carraway, probably the most honest and upstanding character in the novel. Nick works at the Probity Trust, and he describes arriving there: "…the early morning sun threw my shadow westward as I hurried down the white chasms of lower New York…" (50). He also said on page 50: "I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and woman and machines gives to the restless eye." Culture was alive and well in New York City, and Nick explains that in the evening, at eight o'clock, the "dark lanes" of the city streets "were five deep with throbbing taxi cabs, bound for the theater district" (51). Broadway plays are popular today, of course, and probably the line of taxi cabs looks the same as it did in the novel.

The character Tom Buchanan is a wealthy sexist and racist person who cheats on his wife Daisy, the woman that Jay Gatsby covets. Perhaps Fitzgerald is using Tom to show readers that there were distinct racial lines drawn in that era in New York, because Tom makes many statements that are very racist. For example, "It's up to us (white people), who are dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things" (19). He also said, "The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be…will be utterly submerged" (10-11).

Tom seems very worried that African-Americans will gain power and that everything in society will be thrown "overboard" and there will be "intermarriage between black and white" (130). And Fitzgerald uses "white" frequently which seems to symbolize that white, not black, was the right color for the 1920s. Maybe Fitzgerald didn't have all these white images based on racial feelings in that era, maybe he was illustrating fictional purity more than juxtaposing black against white. But the characters' clothes are white, there are "white palaces" (6); there is a "white roadster" (48); women speak "as cool as their white dresses" (10); and Daisy's face has a "complexion powdered milky white" (20).

Was Fitzgerald making social commentary on the 1920s?

Wealth is like a magnet for some people, and the many people that showed up at Gatsby's lavish parties in the absurdly opulent mansion were there mostly to be near his money. That would also be true today, that people gravitate towards power and wealth, so it can be said that Fitzgerald was describing how new-found wealth led to false friendships and phoniness. Buchanan is also wealthy, but his house on Long Island is more toned down because he doesn't need to present gaudy extravagance -- he is from old money. And while Gatsby's parties are thrown in part to attract Daisy, she will not leave the "old money" that Buchanan has acquired through legitimate means for Gatsby's new money that was acquired through illegal means.

This dynamic between Tom, Daisy, and Jay Gatsby can be seen as Fitzgerald's way of showing that no matter how much money you made doing questionable things, people of the old school aren't going to abandon their way of life to try and fit in with phony new wealthy life styles. All the visitors at Gatsby's parties just want to be seen with the rich set because Gatsby was seen by outsiders as living the perfect life, but through Nick's narrative the reader knows that Gatsby was quite shallow and he was putting on a show in order to lure Daisy into his world.