Prohibition In The Great Gatsby Essay

Prohibition - The Good, the Bad, the Ugly Prohibition simply began as an idea of many groups of the time, primarily the Anti-Saloon League and the Women Christian Temperance Union (National Woman 's Christian Temperance Union). The idea of outlawing alcohol seemed to be a fantastic idea: Outlawing alcohol would completely remove it from circulation, and would make the people better as a society. However, what happened in actuality was the polar opposite. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald illustrates that alcoholism is an extreme sign of how the characters act and develop through the story. He shows how certain characters gathered their wealth; he ties in how organized crime began to develop due to the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment. The Roaring Twenties was a time for laissez-faire government; the people wanted complete freedom and fun. This was …show more content…
This law also outlawed the buying of it, however strangely, it did not prohibit the drinking of it. This law was set in stone by a national amendment: The Eighteenth. In the Roaring Twenties, laissez-faire was the primary ideology of the people of the United States, especially in the bigger and more metropolis-like cities. Laissez-faire is the practice of having the government stay out of the people’s ideologies and life styles. After World War I, this is precisely what the people wanted: A life without regulation. World War I had taken a huge toll on the people, and the parties and such was exactly what the people of America dreamed of. In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby, the secondary main protagonist, threw huge parties to try and gather people to his mansion, and it seemed to gain a huge image of him, since over time, his ‘regulation’ grew by more and more people appearing at them. However, in the very end, it seemed to not do anything for him, as when he was murdered by George Wilson, nobody attended his funeral (Fitzgerald