How Did The Great Gatsby Influence The 1920s

Social Influences of the 1920’s in The Great Gatsby
The 1920’s was a decade full of careless spending, lavish lifestyles and the American dream. Anyone from anywhere could make it in life if they just worked hard enough. The 1920s proved to be a prosperous time for many, in fact so many people thrived in this decade that almost everyone thought that they would eventually grow to be very rich themselves. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby the sumptuous lives of the wealthy and the economic boom in America shaped the characters, plot, and setting of the novel. The effortless spending of the time influenced the lives of the characters as well as the background of the story.
Facile squandering seemed to be a hobby of the people of the 1920s, including Gatsby and Tom. Gatsby would throw extravagant parties where he did not even know most of the guests, all in a futile attempt
When Gatsby passes away, Nick and Gatsby’s father are the only people to celebrate his life and show that they actually had cared for him. “I began to look involuntarily for cars. So did Gatsby’s father…the minister glanced several times as his watch, so I took him inside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn’t any use. Nobody came” (175). Out of all the people Gatsby had invited to his parties, all the people that would call him a friend, no one came to give their respects. The people of West Egg showed their true selfish colors in this passage, it didn’t matter to them that they’d visited Gatsby’s home numerous times or that they had once called Gatsby a friend. The self-centered attitude of the prosperous in the 1920s is expressed in this because no one cared about Gatsby’s family or friends or even Gatsby himself enough to stop by. The wealthy civilization of the 1920s just cared for themselves and how much money they could make and not about the people around