Great Gatsby :: essays papers

Great GatsbyThe great gatsby and the fall of the american dream.The book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was an icon of itstime. The book discusses topics that were important, controversial and raise back in 1920s America. The novel is an exploration of theAmerican Dream as it exists in a corrupt period of history. The mainthemes in the book atomic number 18 the decay of morals and values and thefrustration of a modern society. The Great Gatsby describes the decayof the American Dream and the want for money and materialism. Thisnovel also describes the gap in the midst of the rich and the poor (Gatsby andthe Wilsons, West Egg and the Valley of the Ashes) by comparing thedifferences between the Western United States (traditional westernculture) and the Eastern United States (money obsessed values). On asmaller scale this could be seen as the difference between the West Egg(the vernal, money) and the East egg (the old money). The 1920s werea time of corruption and the adu lteration of moral values for the UnitedStates and many other countries. World War One had just ended andpeople were reveling in the materialism that came with the end of it,new mass produced commodities such as motor cars and radios werefilling peoples driveways and houses, money was more accessible(before the Great Depression). Cars were becoming a social emblem inthe mid-twenties as we can see with Gatsbys five cars, one of which he givesto Nick and one of which kills Myrtle Wilson later on in the novel.Herbert Hoover (an American President) verbalize in 1925 We will root outpoverty and put two cars in every garage. The parties that Gatsby heldevery week in the summer were a symbol of the carelessness of the time.Gatsby would hide in the house while the lymph glands, most of whom werenot even invited, would party, eat and drink until the early hours ofthe morning without even meeting the guest or even knowing who he was.People would turn up just to be seen or reported in the localnewspapers In his blue angel garden people came and went like moths amongthe whisperings and the champagne. This shows the carelessness of theguests. Another quote about the parties refers to the way the guestsdevour the endless supply of food and never give a thought as to whogave it to them. Every Friday five crates of oranges and Lemonsarrived from a fruiterer In New York- Every Monday these same oranges