In The Great Gatsby, there are many conflicting character roles that collide with one another. Almost every individual character conflicts with another one or two characters that cause major drama in the book, which is what the twenties, the “Roaring Twenties” was full of. Since the decade was full of drama, excitement, lies, and occurrences such as the stock market rising, everyone was ready to be their own hero, without ever realizing that they could be a villain. But could the true villain of the book, the true villain of the decade itself, be something other than the people who were supporting and living it? The true villain in The Great Gatsby is society because popular trend influenced individuals, and the American dream was presented
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The fault could easily have been Gatsby’s. Gatsby, whose love, lust and obsession with Mrs. Buchannan overtook his common sense, could have easily been blamed for the parties in their entirety, but when does the reader stop to think that the fault could have been something bigger: the fault of the society that presented itself to be perfect. In the twenties, everyone saw perfection, inside and outside of America, when they looked at the U.S., but once one dug into the truth of the country, the perfection of the decade was a façade to show that even things that look perfect can be the most broken, which is what Fitzgerald portrayed in his novel. In a world where blame is placed on every individual whose once clean hands make a simple mistake, no one looks towards society to see the flaws of the past and present weighing upon the shoulders of everyone who lives in it. The society in which Daisy lived in told her she had to marry rich because she was a beautiful girl who deserved all the riches in the world, which pressured her to marry Tom. Gatsby lived in a society where he had riches, no matter how he got them, so it was made known to him, through the eyes of society, that he should have everything he wanted, the girl included. This was how society influenced Gatsby’s
The fault could easily have been Gatsby’s. Gatsby, whose love, lust and obsession with Mrs. Buchannan overtook his common sense, could have easily been blamed for the parties in their entirety, but when does the reader stop to think that the fault could have been something bigger: the fault of the society that presented itself to be perfect. In the twenties, everyone saw perfection, inside and outside of America, when they looked at the U.S., but once one dug into the truth of the country, the perfection of the decade was a façade to show that even things that look perfect can be the most broken, which is what Fitzgerald portrayed in his novel. In a world where blame is placed on every individual whose once clean hands make a simple mistake, no one looks towards society to see the flaws of the past and present weighing upon the shoulders of everyone who lives in it. The society in which Daisy lived in told her she had to marry rich because she was a beautiful girl who deserved all the riches in the world, which pressured her to marry Tom. Gatsby lived in a society where he had riches, no matter how he got them, so it was made known to him, through the eyes of society, that he should have everything he wanted, the girl included. This was how society influenced Gatsby’s