INFLUENCE OF THE ECONOMY ON “The Great Gatsby”
“The Roaring Twenties” was defined as an era of prosperity, dancing, flapper fashion, and defiance of the Prohibition. This time period followed the end of World War I and everyone was seeking a chance to party and live a carefree life. Differences of social classes were evident and made clear, “...as a culture of consumerism was born” (www.u-s-history.com). F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the renowned authors of the 1920s and still, to this day is widely known for his popular book, “The Great Gatsby”. This story is told by character Nick Carraway, and as writer Pamela Redmond Satran summarizes, “Charming, yet mysterious, Gatsby tries to win the love of patrician woman, who spurns Gatsby for her …show more content…
A social class is defined as a division of a society based on social and economic status. Division seems to be a proper term in this definition because these two classes certainly did not associate together. As portrayed in The Great Gatsby, the lower income class lives out in the country and distant from the city. Fitzgerald creates “The Valley of Ashes” for the poor citizens in the book, like George, Myrtle’s husband. They did not attend the parties, and typically were farmers or unemployed. The poor had to live paycheck to paycheck, if fortunate enough to receive one each month. This is why they did not party and waste money on material things because they had to focus on working hard enough to just get by. Jay Gatsby had been poor when he was younger, but after his mentor, Dan Cody, taught him the ways of the wealthy and provided him with experience, he was driven to seek this life. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s biography, the author includes his life as a young boy, when he became conscious of wealth as he watched his father become an alcoholic and a failure. As he grew up, he worked hard and wanted to live a prosperous life, just as he proposed Gatsby to be like in the story. On the other hand, the wealthy, upper class, moved to the cities to work in the business and machinery industry all day, and to party all night. Fitzgerald created a majority of the characters in Gatsby in this manner, making them like himself in real life. They owned excess and idolized material things and the high end
“The Roaring Twenties” was defined as an era of prosperity, dancing, flapper fashion, and defiance of the Prohibition. This time period followed the end of World War I and everyone was seeking a chance to party and live a carefree life. Differences of social classes were evident and made clear, “...as a culture of consumerism was born” (www.u-s-history.com). F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the renowned authors of the 1920s and still, to this day is widely known for his popular book, “The Great Gatsby”. This story is told by character Nick Carraway, and as writer Pamela Redmond Satran summarizes, “Charming, yet mysterious, Gatsby tries to win the love of patrician woman, who spurns Gatsby for her …show more content…
A social class is defined as a division of a society based on social and economic status. Division seems to be a proper term in this definition because these two classes certainly did not associate together. As portrayed in The Great Gatsby, the lower income class lives out in the country and distant from the city. Fitzgerald creates “The Valley of Ashes” for the poor citizens in the book, like George, Myrtle’s husband. They did not attend the parties, and typically were farmers or unemployed. The poor had to live paycheck to paycheck, if fortunate enough to receive one each month. This is why they did not party and waste money on material things because they had to focus on working hard enough to just get by. Jay Gatsby had been poor when he was younger, but after his mentor, Dan Cody, taught him the ways of the wealthy and provided him with experience, he was driven to seek this life. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s biography, the author includes his life as a young boy, when he became conscious of wealth as he watched his father become an alcoholic and a failure. As he grew up, he worked hard and wanted to live a prosperous life, just as he proposed Gatsby to be like in the story. On the other hand, the wealthy, upper class, moved to the cities to work in the business and machinery industry all day, and to party all night. Fitzgerald created a majority of the characters in Gatsby in this manner, making them like himself in real life. They owned excess and idolized material things and the high end