What Does Old Money Represent In The Great Gatsby

Though The Great Gatsby takes place during the Prohibition era, Long Island’s elite drown in alcohol throughout the book. Fitzgerald gives a realistic glimpse into the lifestyles of the rich during Prohibition and their access to illegal liquor. Alcohol is frequently associated with old money. Gatsby, who is seen as different from the rest of the wealthy people in the book, rarely drinks, while everyone else is constantly drunk. The scarcity of alcohol to the public made it desirable and fashionable to the upper class during Prohibition, despite its poor stigma prior to the era. F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays how the old money of America is directly associated with alcohol and how the upper class society became lost in its own drunkenness.
The Temperance Movement created by the upper class, strategically …show more content…
Throughout the book, all of the wealthy characters such as the Buchanans, Jordan, and the Sloanes treat Gatsby differently because they think he is new money as opposed to old money like them. One difference between the old money, represented by these characters, and the new money, represented by Gatsby, is that Gatsby rarely drinks and the old money characters seem to always be drinking. Gatsby’s experience with his alcoholic mentor Dan Cody exposed him to the consequences of alcohol that much of the rich suffer from. Nick believes that Gatsby’s temperance “was indirectly due to Cody” (Fitzgerald 100). Gatsby’s rags to riches story also involves alcohol, as he was a bootlegger. Ironically, Tom attempts to embarrass Gatsby about his career choice when he claims he “picked [Gatsby] for a bootlegger the first time [he] saw him” even though Gatsby probably helped Tom accumulate his prized alcohol (Fitzgerald 133). The connection between poor Gat’s transformation into wealthy Gatsby and alcohol reveals a more significant connection between wealth and alcohol in the