Gatsby Social Class

The 1920s, which was also known as the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties, was a time of changing attitudes and values. Society became a consumerist society due to the economic growth that took place. Individuals, regardless of race, gender, nationality, and social class believed it was possible to achieve a better life through hard work and dedication. For individuals with this mindset, a better life meant middle-class stability. This concept became known as the American Dream, which appears throughout The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The novel tells the story of a man named Nick Carraway who moves next door to a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby in West Egg. Gatsby aims to rekindle his relationship with Daisy, who is Nick’s married …show more content…
Gatsby aimed to do the impossible, which was to relive and recreate the past with Daisy. Although Daisy did have feelings for Gatsby, she could not leave Tom because she valued his wealth and status in society more than she cared for Gatsby. As Gatsby lays in his pool waiting for a call from Daisy, Nick narrates, “He must have felt that he lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is” (161). Simply put, Nick feels as if Gatsby wasted his life because he earned and flaunted his wealth solely for the purpose of impressing Daisy, in hopes that she will leave Tom to relive the past with him. The fiduciary idioms refer to the literal exorbitant prices of Gatsby’s possessions and the price that Gatsby had to pay to be a part of Daisy’s world. Gatsby compromised his morality, who he used to be, and his life in attempt to be the kind of man that Daisy desires. “He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered,” indicates that Gatsby developed a new perspective on reality, in which he realizes that he invested too much time and effort chasing over an unattainable dream. “What a grotesque thing a rose is” refers to Daisy, whose name is a type of flower, which suggests that Gatsby finally …show more content…
This is shown when Gatsby and Daisy reunited after five years and Gatsby realizes that Daisy isn’t as good as he portrayed her in his illusions. In attempt to gain Daisy’s attention and love, he became focused in obtaining wealth rapidly through unethical business deals to impress her instead of working on improving himself as a person. Gatsby’s schedule that he followed as a young boy contradicts the man that he grew up to be because the schedule indicates that at one point, he had a dream of self-improvement, which he planned on achieving through honest, hard work and time. This is similar to the prototypical dream because his old dream didn’t focus on money, love, or materialistic objects. Moments before his death, Gatsby realizes that his attempts at achieving his American Dream are meaningless because he sacrificed so much for a woman who would never leave her husband because she cared more about her appearances in society. Through this realization, he concludes that he wasted his time trying to recreate the past with a woman who wasn’t as perfect as he made her out to be in his mind. The theme of the American Dream and Fitzgerald’s commentary is essential because it continues to relate to contemporary society. The country of America is built upon the promises of a better life and the possibility of attaining the