Crime in the 1920s and the Great Gatsby

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Crime and corruption in the 1920s and The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby is a masterpiece created by Fitzgerald. Not only does it drown the reader into the novel's touching story, but also helps visualize how life was in the roaring 20s. The American Dream was basically what people lived on in the 1920s. To achieve the American Dream, people would do anything, even follow the road of a criminal. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald reflects the crime and corruption of the 1920s by depicting bootlegging, proving to us that people would do anything to gain the American Dream. Back in the 1920s, crime was at its highest. As the article from the Proquest Research Library, “Honorable and Dishonorable Times: American Gangsters of the 1920s and 30s” says, crime was considered a huge business, thanks to one of the biggest criminal of the time, Al Capone (Beshears, pg#5). Al Capone, also known as Scarface, marked his position in to the Underworld through his success in crime. Even after he died, many gangsters considered highly of him and made him their role models. The main reason crime was so popular was because many tried achieving their American Dream the easier way, which was doing crime and gaining wealth from it. Fitzgerald shows a similar crime world in The Great Gatsby. As stated in an article called “A Day to Remember” by Phillips, Charles, Gatsby gains his wealth/the American Dream by bootlegging. The American Dream is corrupted since Gatsby tried achieving it through illegal activities. Alcohol consumption was huge in the 1920s. People were getting drunk everywhere, even people who had never touched alcohol before. Even though the 18th amendment was made to prohibit alcohol, also known as Prohibition (Phillips, 1), people would still drink and did not care of the consequences. This was because many people had just came back from World War 1 and after

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