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On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the torn love between and man and a women. The theme of the novel, however; shows a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action takes place over a few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a restricted geographical area of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic dispute on America in the 1920's, in particular the disintegration of the American dream is an era of lacking prosperity and material possession.
F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays the 1920's as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidence in its embracing cynicism, greed and empty persuit for pleasure. The reckless feeling that led to decadent parties and wild Jazz music, like the ones shown in The Great Gatsby with the miraculous parties Gatsby throws every Saturday night, resulted mainly in the destruction of the American dream, as the unrestrained want for money and pleasure and to go beyond the noble goals. When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought in the war became more disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced, made the Victorian social mortality of the early 20th century American seemed like boring, stuffy and empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market, which was the consequence of the war, led to a sudden, sustained increase in the national wealth and a new found materialism, as people began to spend and consume at dangerous levels. A person from any social group or background could, eventually, make a fortune, but the American aristocracy (families with old wealth) disliked the newly rich industrialists and spectators. Additionally, the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919, which banned the sale of alcohol, created a thriving underworld formatted to satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among both the rich and the poor.

Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as symbols of the 1920's...