Social Class In The Great Gatsby

Social class is defined as having a ranking in society based on economic status. They have been in existence for thousands of years and it is no surprise that they play a substantial importance in fictional works as they do the same in reality. In the novel The Great Gatsby, exceptional author F. Scott Fitzgerald utilizes materialistic symbolism to explore the effects that a symbiotic relationship has between social classes and how they can ultimately be destructive to each other. The time period of The Great Gatsby is set during the Roaring 20s, a time when the rich prospered even more because of consumer culture and the poor struggled on a daily basis. Although contrasting, the upper class would not exist without a functioning lower class. In Bloom’s Critical Interpretation, it is stated that often, people forget that if an individual is “wealthy by definition”, there is a “relationship between” the wealth at hand and the community from which it is derived from (Lena 41). A lack of a lower class would result in a diminishing upper class as …show more content…
Driving a car is shown to be a “metaphor for mortality” and foreshadows Daisy running Myrtle over with Gatsby’s car, leaving Myrtle dead (Johnson 58). By itself, cars are just an object during the Roaring 20s that symbolize wealth and higher social class. Gatsby only possessed them as a way to prove to Daisy that he is worthy of her. Fitzgerald incorporates them to accentuate the problems each class faces. Cars are just a materialistic symbol used to portray the issues individuals face no matter what class they belong to. Many of the lower classed people live in the Valley of Ashes, which is also home to a “billboard advertising the services of a specialist in the treatment of eye disorders”, Dr. T.J Eckleburg (Parini 250). The eyes in the advertisement symbolise how God is watching the way the upper class is foolishly spending money while the rest are trying to