Greed In The Great Gatsby

Published in 1925, The Great Gatsby is a novel that describes the lavish lifestyle of the elite in 1922. During this time of economic prosperity and prohibition, Americans became increasingly commercialized and demanding in regards to their possessions. There are always two sides to each coin, and within this novel there is no exception to that rule. Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway are the embodiment of separate sides of the same coin. The title character of The Great Gatsby is a young man in his later twenties. While living in North Dakota in his youth, Gatsby despised being poor. Through his own willpower and determination, Jay Gatsby was able to rise from poverty and attain the riches that he had always desired. Jay achieved his goal of obtaining
When Gatsby first meets Daisy while serving in the military he lies about his past to convince her that he was worthy of her love. Daisy had promised to wait for Jay; however she married Tom Buchanan in 1919 while Jay was in Oxford following the war. From that moment on Jay Gatsby dedicated himself, and all that he would obtain, in the pursuit of Daisy. Most of the information received about Gatsby is withheld until fairly late in the novel. Fitzgerald keeps the information to a minimum so as to allow Gatsby’s reputation to precede him. Gatsby isn’t introduced as a character with dialogue until chapter 3. The fickle instances in the preceding chapters regarding Gatsby have only the purpose to create a mysterious natured man. The result is that the reader knows only the man that lives in excess and is surrounded by powerful men and beautiful
Gatsby endows Daisy with an idealistic perfection that she cannot possibly achieve in reality and pursues her with a passionate zeal that blinds him to her limitations. His dream of her disintegrates, revealing the corruption that wealth causes and the unworthiness of the goal, much in the way Fitzgerald sees the American dream crumbling in the 1920s, as America’s powerful optimism, vitality, and individualism become subordinated to the amoral pursuit of