Fitzgeralds Great Gatsby and the 20s Essay -- Fitzgerald Great Gatsby

Fitzgeralds Great Gatsby and the 20sAfter a time of prosperity, the roaring 1920s became a decade of social decomposition reaction and declining moral values. The forces this erosion of ethics can be explained by a variety of theories. However, F. Scott Fitzgerald paints a convincing portrait of waning social sexual morality in his unexampled, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald portrays the nefarious cause of materialism created by the wealth-driven close of the time. This was an era where societal values made wealth and material possessions a defining element of ones character. The implications of the wealthy mindset and its effects on humansity are at the source of the conflict in The Great Gatsby, offering a glimpse into the despair of the 20s. During a time of postwar American society, its restless alienation, and its consequent reliance on money as a code for expressing emotions and identity (Lewis, 46), Fitzgerald focuses his pen on the inevitable self-love created by the illu sions of wealth and its anomalous connection with bask during the 20s. In order to convey his theory, Fitzgerald builds a repertory of piffling characters whose existence revolves around material value rather than tangible human qualities. For example, Tom Buchanan, the husband of Daisy, is introduced as having an appealing and rich animation. Hed brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest, Nick comments about Tom. It was hard to interpret that a man in my own generation was wealthy generous to do that, (p. 10). Tom is depicted as an enormously wealthy content figure, one with handsome and powerful physical accomplishments (10). But Fitzgeralds explanation does not go much further than that. Toms paradigm is limited to a list of superficial accomplishments none of which resemble both sacredly fulfilling traits. Tom thus represents the end result of a someone consumed by wealth, because that is his only defining characteristic. Although we could pity such a char acter, Fitzgerald makes convinced(predicate) that we dont feel much of anything towards Tom because he was natural into wealth and never had to pursue it. His money was divested of dreams before he was dismantle born (Lewis, 51). Since Toms lifestyle links intrinsically to his character, null he does resembles the passions and desires of a natural human being, rather he is visualised as a machine or byproduct of his family fortune. Tom la... ... to love, the to the highest degree powerful of all human nip. The culture of wealth, writes Marius Bewley, represents the romantic enlargement of the possibilities of life on a level at which the material and the spiritual puddle become inextricably confused, (Bewley, 37). Gatsby learned this lesson the hard way, giving up his spiritual vision of love and losing it to the emptiness associated with wealth. Fitzgerald realized the confusion in the 1920s of a culture based around wealth and used his novel to expose the blandness of wea lthy lifestyles in contrast with the human feeling of love. If love were a color it would be red, and if it had a mind of its own it would remain far from the gray Valley of ashes (27) of New York in the 20s. Gatsby unfortunately combined those two worlds together and the gray dusted everyplace the red. In the end, Gatsby is murdered, Tom and Daisy continue like zombies, and Nick, disenfranchised, decides to leave altogether. Fitzgerald portrays the essence of emptiness in all the characters touched or consumed by wealth and leaves the referee with a clear message No sense of fulfillment, specifically regarding love, leave alone result in a life consumed by wealth.