The Great Gatsby Relate To Today

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The Great Gatsby has more impact as a novel today rather than when it was originally published simply because it shows how history repeats itself. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel depicted America in a cynical view, portraying greedy, selfish and immoral characters. The same view on America can be seen today. Before the financial recession, twenty-first century America became a gluttonous, materialistic, possession-obsessed society. Before anyone could stop it, people were illegally scheming their way up the social ladder to gain unfair financial status. In The Great Gatsby, Daisy and Gatsby are the two main characters that are obsessed with their status. Daisy feels that money is equivalent to power, and loves the ease at which it puts her. Gatsby,…show more content…
She is beautiful, wealthy, his version of perfection. He weaves a tangled web of lies just so she will feel he is worthy of her attention. Before Gatsby met Daisy, his only dreams were ones that he could get by hard work and determination, not unfairness and lies. This is made shown at the end of the novel at Jay’s own funeral, when his father, Mr.Gatz, presents Nick Carraway, the narrator of the novel with a keepsake from Gatsby's childhood, a journal of resolutions that young Jay had listed for himself to achieve. The young James Gatz was determined and committed to the classic American dream. Mr. Gatz "read each item aloud and then looked eagerly at me. I think he rather expected me to copy down the list for my own use" (182). This shows that Gatsby originally had the American dream of bettering himself, but then got pushed towards the greedy direction of fame and social status, which disappointed his…show more content…
Gatsby longs for perfection that he feels he needs to lie and cheat his way towards, and Daisy longs for materialistic things that she will get by any means, even if she has to deny herself true love. Gatsby and Daisy’s tendencies mirror the commonplace morals and attitudes of the 1920’s, but they also mirror widespread views that American society still holds today. There are many people in twenty-first century America that are like Daisy, who love and desire wealth and hold a steady obsession with material objects. There is no doubt that people still probably marry for wealth and status the same way Daisy and so many others did during the 1920’s. The obsession with social hierarchy drives people to be selfish and greedy- never happy with what they have. At the same time, there are many people like Gatsby today who feel they have to cheat their way to the top to be happy, like so many corporate giants who have schemed for years and stole billions of dollars from innocent, but maybe slightly naïve taxpayers. Both kinds of people have lost the sense of the American dream. Originally people just wanted a perfect but humble life: a loving, close-knit family, a steady paying job, and ultimately pure happiness. But once people see that it is possible to have much more than that, they begin to get covetous and only want more. This shows the moral behaviors that was present in the 1920’s and that are
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