Poverty In The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby was a success when it was first published because it was more than just a tragic love story of a man who falls in love with a married woman, but it also had a much bigger story about life in the 1920s and how people want what they think everyone else has. There is a division between the west egg people and the east egg people, but to the Valley of the Ashes, they are both rich places. The Valley of the Ashes is the area between The East Egg and New York City. It is where the working poor struggle to survive just as wheat struggles to survive in the desert. Throughout the story there is an illusion of a class system and that Tom & Daisy are superior to anyone in the valley of the ashes. This is seen when Tom and Nick go …show more content…
The people in the valley of the ashes actually have hope that someday they can rise above their situation and move out of the valley, but the people who do not live in the valley are the truly hopeless ones because they do not have anything to work for, they wander through life constantly looking for something and use material objects to fill the gap. This is why the people are always driving around, moving around they are looking for more. There is always a party to attend and they make up drama to have something to talk about. Daisy is no better than Tom, she loves Gatsby but because she sees that marriage is more than just love, she must marry Tom. She is reading the letter from Gatsby crying and then throws away the expensive pearls and tell them that she has changed her mind. She loves Gatsby but feels pressure to marry Tom because he is rich and more socially respected, so she has to marry Tom. This is also why she stays with Tom even when he is having the affair with Myrtle and lives in his past football days. She realizes that she has to choose money and status over love and then spends the rest of her life wandering with no purpose and no direction, just like when they ride around in their cars not going anywhere. This is another example of how g wealth and materialism trumps love and continues to distort the american dream. This distortion of the american dream is seen more than just in their materialism and social status, this is also seen in their lack of empathy towards everyone. The characters all think that they are better than the other and do not care about anyone but themselves. Even when Gatsby had died, no one seemed to care. Even Daisy did not go to his funeral nor did she feel bad because it was her actions