The Great Gatsby And The Roaring Twenties The Roaring Twenties were full of marvels and mysteries; good and bad. The truth in society is unveiled in The Great Gatsby in terms of wealth and The American dream. The rich people in the story are extremely wealthy, and what they say about their backstory may not be what it is in reality. Rich people have easy lives in terms of money, but the middle class and lower class workers must to toil to make ends meet. There are times where it is ugly for the poor, and Fitzgerald makes it clear.
Fitzgerald also makes it clear that there really is no American Dream, or at least, The American Dream is not what it is hyped up to be. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby shows the many faces of society in the Roaring Twenties and reveals the dark truth under them. The great Jay Gatsby, looked up to by his peers as rich and powerful, but is also a very mysterious man. Not many of the party goers have ever met him. Gatsby is a very wealthy man, and the origin of him and his money is unclear.
He claims to have gone to Oxford, but Tom dug into his past and found he was not a full time student at Oxford: ‘And you found he was an Oxford man,’ said Jordan helpfully. ‘An Oxford man! He was incredulous. ‘Like hell he is! He wears a pink suit. ” (Fitzgerald, 122) Gatsby is a very smart man, but his only encounter with Oxford was for five months after the war taking a few classes. Gatsby never did attend a college, or succesfully. How did he attain so much wealth if he did not have a true college education?
Tom has a thought: “He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That’s one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn’t far wrong. ” (Fitzgerald, 133) Tom, although he is disliked by many, knows a little about, Gatsby because he himself is a very rich man who can get things done with his money. Gatsby may have acquired his money by selling alcohol, and that is why he needs to keep a very secretive life. In order to attain his dream, he needed to perform illegal activities.
Gatsby is a very mysterious man and he sometimes can not keep to his fictitious stories of his wealth. In a quote from The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby, catches himself making a mistake of his story and does not correct himself well enough for Nick to believe, but Gatsby is a powerful man and Nick acts like he glances over it. “I thought you inherited your money! ‘ ‘I did, old sport,’ he said automatically, ‘but I lost most of it in the big panic — the panic of the war. ” (Fitzgerald, 90) Nick understands what is happening, but he respects Gatsby, who knows Nick is catching on to him and realizes Nick pays attention to everything he says.
Gatsby is careless talking to Nick about his past, and he made a large mistake here, especially with Daisy, the love of Gatsby’s life, in the conversation. Gatsby’s story of wealth is very mysterious as was with many rich people in the 1920’s because of their felonious acts to gain money. All of this talk about the wealthy, and some wonder: what about the poor? In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald shows the reader what it looks like to live in an impoverished area of New York.
The Valley of Ashes, where George Wilson and his wife Myrtle live until the end of the book, is poor, and dark part of the city. … where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. ” (Fitzgerald, 23) It was not a pretty place to live, but many had no choice; it was all they could afford. The poor worked as hard or harder for their money, but made just a fraction of what Gatsby or Tom make.
George does not have much, but he has his wife and faith to keep him going. Until Myrtle is killed and he believes Gatsby was the one driving the car that killed her. He then only had God. God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God! ” (Fitzgerald, 159) The impoverished have almost nothing, and what they have they prize with all of their might. George lost something he had, so he seeked vengeance on the suspect he thought had taken it. He realized if Myrtle was gone he should go to, because he has nothing more to live for. “… the gardener saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass… ” (Fitzgerald, 162) It was a tough life for the poor in what was suppose to be a beautiful time in America.
Boy, did Gatsby have a mission. He had a dream. The American Dream. He had acquired the wealth, but he was lacking something. “… his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. ” (Fitzgerald, 180) Before his death, he dreamt of Daisy and him living happily ever after, but it never came. He was dreaming to go back, back into the past where she and him enjoyed each other, and there was no Tom. He tried, but even with all of his money, he could not get Daisy back like the old days. His trying cost him, incidentally, his life.
He had achieved what from the outside looks like the American Dream, but when you delve into his true life and wants, it seems he never achieved the dream. “… he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. ” (Fitzgerald, 20) Gatsby’s American Dream was not only obtaining wealth. He wanted love, more than anything, and he never got to achieve that because of a mistake caused by a mix up of lovers and accusers of different classes.
The American Dream is not a certain goal to reach for; it is nothing. All it does is get people to try to obtain wealth by moving to the US, but when many people are hunting for treasure, it gets violent, and people get hurt. They realize they want to go back because it was better that way, when they were with the people they loved, not trying win them back with materialistic things. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. ” (Fitzgerald, 180) It is called a dream, but it is more of a nightmare.
The Roaring Twenties. When a title like that is given to a time period, it sounds amazing, like nothing is wrong. For the wealthy, maybe so in some cases, but where they had possessions and money, they lacked other things in life. The poor had little to nothing, and if they lost that something, they had nothing more to give in life. And the so called American Dream, seemed to never have come. A title can lead to thoughts, and if you dig deep and read through it all, you will discover The Roaring Twenties were roaring, but not in a fully happy way.