Pessimism In Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous novel The Great Gatsby explores his pessimistic views of the new age and high class using the different characters to represent the disjunction of the new technology and ideas in the Modern Age. Tom and Daisy represent the immoral illusion of wealthy and aristocratic society that destroys the community when resisting the change in the Modern Age. Gatsby also puts on an illusion of wealth but unlike Tom and Daisy, he becomes delusional because he believes in this false idealization that he just needs to get rich in order to win over his love Daisy. Last, the narrator Nick recognizes the illusion in this society and therefore takes place as just an observer amoral observer at the beginning, but through the course …show more content…
Tom never had to work for his status, he simply had it handed it down from his parents and ancestors which led Nick to describe him as “a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterwards savors of anti-climax” (5). Tom’s most prime moments of his life happened at a young age and most endure the retreating of his status after that while trying to keep on as much as he can to pass to his children, representing the privileged distress as the idea of having to stay in the same class became a past tradition during this new age. After the death of his mistress and Gatsby, Tom and Daisy leave the city and Tom has one final conversation with Nick, when Nick realizes “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money…and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (chapter 9). In attempting to rule the community with his heredity aristocracy, Tom only destroys the place and uses the money as excuse to move away as he realizes he cannot find any more suitable places left for his kind in this new world. Nick finally recognizes the problem with Tom and Daisy’s illusion of the inherited wealthy lifestyle when he notices “They weren’t happy…and yet they weren’t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together” (chapter 9). Tom and Daisy never really loved each other, only the wealth and status each one had to offer, and both would selfishly do anything to keep it that way leading a delusional life to try to keep that power. Nick recognizes the battle of Tom and Daisy to keep their aristocratic lifestyle and illusion alive from the new ideas of the Modern Age using any