Old Money In The Great Gatsby

“But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires”( Ayn Rand; The Atlas Shrugged). In Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby money and love are intertwined in almost every way. Fitzgerald writes about the distinction between old money and new money- represented in this novel by Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby. Gatsby lived in West Egg, a neighborhood in New York of the newly wealthy. Mr. Buchanan lived in East Egg, amongst those of old money. Both men find themselves trying to buy the love of one woman, Daisy Buchanan. Daisy, while married to Mr. Buchanan, has an affair with her past lover Mr. Gatsby. Although Mr. Buchanan was not a stranger to affairs, he was not going to let Gatsby win Daisy’s love. In The Great Gatsby money is used as a tool to buy love; Gatsby builds …show more content…
Even as a child Gatsby did not feel as though he belonged to or with his parents; he wanted more out of life, Gatsby wanted money. Gatsby’s past was a mystery to everyone in both East and West Egg. Many rumors and tales surrounded the coming-up of Gatsby and his wealth; the truth was never fully known to most of the masses. “The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself...So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end” (Fitzgerald; 98). Gatsby recreated himself from his own imagination and did it in such a way that everyone believed this to be his true self. Gatsby wanted to make himself into someone worthy of Daisy and her love. Gatsby built his mansion on West Egg in order to be directly across the bay from Daisy, and then he began throwing extravagant parties in hopes that Daisy would stumble into one of