The Great Gatsby A Goal Of Corruption

A detailed Summary of The Great Gatsby A Goal Of Corruption

Wealth, assets, and attaining a superior net worth are the dreams and fantasies of many Americans. The goal to have a better life is pure in essence, but, for those with weak wills and simple minds, this goal can twist their morals and values from a fair-skinned maiden to a withered screeching harpy. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is a contemporary novel published in 1925. Fitzgerald shows that material wealth can have a corrupting through his novel. He does this through the characters of Tom Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Jay Gatsby.

Fitzgerald gives a perfect example of a morally deficient person through Tom. Tom's only concern is keeping his highbred social and his flowing bank account. Obtaining his money from his family, Tom has no compassion for the lower class. Tom looks upon the "valley of ashes...where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hill and grotesque gardens" with a superincumbent discontent (Fitzgerald 27). He fails to realize that it is people like him who produce these valleys. Tom is also a white supremacist. He feels that "the white race...will be utterly submerged" by the minorities (17). This is probably because he has no friends that are minorities and most if no

Fitzgerald proves that material wealth can corrupt human beings through his novel. Two characters die because of this corruption; the other is so accustomed to dealing with it that he escapes unharmed. People should not work so hard to gain material wealth for themselves, but they should work as a whole to better humanity.

Jay Gatsby, the namesake of Fitzgerald's novel, is a character with questionable morals. Fitzgerald reveals that Gatsby, in his youth, has the pure and simplistic goal of becoming a better person. However when he meets Daisy, while stationed in Louisville. She has a "tremendous power over Gatsby and his fate"; so powerful that his dream metamorphoses into one of attaining wealth so that he may have her (Person 164). As his new dream is born Gatsby "like God...create[s] himself, name and all" (Scott 91). How Gatsby acquires his wealth is never fully revealed, but Fitzgerald hints that "he...bought up a lot of side-street drug stores [in New York] and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter"(Fiztgerald 141). He is a bootlegger and, even with the innocence of his determination, his means of reaching his goal corrupts him along the way; he becomes the "gentleman gangster" (Shain 161). Gatsby is very liberated though, permitting the guests who attend his elaborate parties to "[conduct] themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with amusement parks" (Fiztgerald 45). Allowing this to occur shows the reader that Gatsby does not know how to project an image of someone whose family is rich with the

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1049
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English