The Great Gatsby Irony Analysis

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby shows irony through character relationships, Gatsby's life, and the abundance of alcohol. The Great Gatsby’s irony shines out through Tom’s treatment of Daisy’s affair. Tom has been publicly unfaithful to Daisy time after time, yet Daisy’s affair offends him to the core. Tom says, “nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have marriage between black and white” (130). The 1920’s were a decade of liberation for women. The rise of the feminist movement, as well as World War I’s new need for mixed gender jobs gave women a freedom they had never felt before. Men did not always adapt well to this changing reality. They saw women as lesser than men and were disgusted by their immorality even when they exhibited the same behavior. Tom’s ideas show his traditionalism as well as his hypocrisy.
Gatsby’s whole life is a facade invented to woo Daisy. Gatsby pretends to be a man who grew up wealthy. He throws crazy parties, carries his war medals in his pockets, and shows everyone a picture of him from Oxford. When Daisy emerges, this is all thrown away. Nick says that, “the whole caravansary had fallen like a card house at the disapproval in her eyes” (114). Alcohol is the last ironic object in The Great Gatsby. Alcohol can be found everywhere in the novel. Gatsby has alcohol at his parties, Tom has it at his apartment, and Daisy serves it at dinner. So what? Alcohol is everywhere in modern society, why not in the 1920’s? The 1920’s took place under Prohibition which prevented the creation, transportation, or consumption of alcohol. Unfortunately, alcohol remained widely used throughout the US in the 1920’s. The Great Gatsby is full of irony, from Daisy and Tom, to Gatsby, to