Class Mobility In The Great Gatsby

Being a poor or wealthy man in a controlled environment doesn’t prevent anyone from going against honest morals to earn cash. During the early 1900’s, class mobility existed as the rich and poor roamed among the U.S. This was a time where Consumerism and American Exceptionalism dominated our society as people from left to right were persuaded by the idea of luxuries and wealth. We became more independent as a country as we saw ourselves as the best which was also applied within the community. A book called ,The Great Gatsby, represented the relationship between the lower classes and higher classes by symbolising concepts of riches from reality. The novel explains how the poor cannot live up to the wealthy as many either fall short or were destined …show more content…
During Tom’s conversation with Wilson, he finds out that him and his wife, Myrtle, want to move west, even though it was really because Wilson found out that Myrtle was having an affair with someone else, but Tom also realizes that there is “no difference between men, in intelligence or race” when it comes to different classes (Fitzgerald 124). A high class man like Tom expects Wilson to be clueless and dumbfounded since he is a lower class citizen, but his surprised reaction illustrates the arrogance of the rich of which they do not have sympathy for the struggling. G.K. Chesterton was an English philosopher who wasn’t very supportive to the idea that being wealthy means having success; he believed that the desire of being successful turns people into “snobbish” citizens while they “do spread a sort of evil poetry of worldliness” around those who don’t achieve their goal of riches (Chesterton). The moral values of the rich weren’t necessarily harming others; instead, their manners, and the way they treat lower class citizens poorly, reflects from their wealth. The higher classes aren’t the only ones who are affected by this dream of wealth, the lower classes also make desperate choices as an attempt to join the