The Great Gatsby Essay Example

Rolling Twenties Brother The era known as the Roaring Twenties was a time of immense joy, opportunity and prosperity. Unfortunately, the 1920’s was also a period where greed, corruption and organized crime took a firm foothold. The exuberant happiness of the time was only trumped by its gap between the rich and the poor. The novel shows the true face of the so-called Age of Wonderful Nonsense with the writer’s own personal conflict. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s groundbreaking novel The Great Gatsby has stood the test of time with its messages of how corruption, extravagance, and overindulgence can destroy people’s lives and relationships. Egotism can overtake the minds of virtually anyone who attempts to gain status and wealth. The gift of humility is something that would be hard to come by during the 1920’s in the American northeast. One character in The Great Gatsby that shows the vice of overindulgence is Mrs. Daisy Buchanan, the cousin of the main character and narrator, Nick Caraway. In one scene from the book, Nick mentions Chicago and Daisy asks, “Do they miss me?”(Fitzgerald 9). She shows how much of a narcissist she is here by the fact that she is concerned about someone’s opinion in a city over five hundred miles away. Another critical character in the book, Mr. Jay Gatsby, shows his own insecurities by throwing lavish soirees to distance himself from his rural upbringings (“Great Gatsby Captures” SRC). Nick’s revulsion with the way of life in the eastern United States is only further perpetrated by Tom’s adultery. The similarities between Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship share many of the same problems that plagued Fitzgerald and his eventual wife, Zelda. This type of self-indulgence and egotism is at the root of someone’s insecurity and their need to feel important. Probably the most recurring theme of the twenties was the appalling amount of corruption that plagued America. Even our nation’s national pastime, baseball, was not left untainted by the dark