Great Gatsby Materialism Research Paper

ENG 3U
Wednesday, July 11th 2012

Materialism Changed People’s Attitude

In the 20th century, after the World War I, rapid surge of industrial and technological growth swept throughout the world. At the same time, people started to build their own ideas and belief based on the materialism rather than giving higher priorities to moral and individual values. As Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby portrayed a story happening in that time period, it contains various contents about materialism. In order to display the drawbacks of materialism, the author demonstrated counter argument using a symbolism.

In the book The Great Gatsby, Gatsby’s car plays a very important role in showing both the wealth and the negative aspects of materialism at the
The author describes the place to be very deserted, destructive, and the amalgam of foulness. For example, "where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air" (Fitzgerald 26). This generates a picture of the valley with the houses that are dirty, smokes all over the place with a bad smell, and not cheerful people on the streets. Additionally just as the name represents, the valley of ashes is the images full of grey ashes. Not only the physical images are corrupted, it also demonstrates corrupted meanings as well. The colour grey that is used to describe the place shows the moral destruction of the characters in the book. The clearest one shown is Tom and Myrtle’s affair happening right beneath Wilson’s eye. The valley of ashes is also where Myrtle’s death takes place. In the book, Tom and Daisy respectively use and harm members of this class with no remorse. Even though the valley of ashes also symbolizes the poor, as it is located between places where people live fairly well, the image naturally leads to be the wrong-being of the rich, or the supporters of materialism. It is shown that the negative aspects are somewhat ignored by people in the book. It depicts the place to be “a certain desolate area of land” (Fitzgerald 23).
T. J. Eckleberg, which actually is an advertisement of an ophthalmic hospital. Furthermore, through this very big advertisement that sticks out clearly so that everyone can see, the material aspects of the materialism are revealed. The description of the eyes also contains symbols that represent money. The colour of the eyes, yellow and blue, shows that the doctor cares about money and materials. However the characters in the book, especially Wilson, The Great Gatsby consider it as a divine structure such as staring down upon and judging American society as a moral wasteland. This false belief shows how people thought that having money gives a lot of power and control over everything, including their lives. One other important thing about the Eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleberg is located in the valley of ashes. Since the valley of ashes represents a corruption of materialists, the eyes naturally become a part of that corruption. The fact that the advertisement is considered as a god in the novel, the author tries to show that people become blind to the negative aspects of the money, even when it is obviously