The Great Gatsby Study Guide

5 Major Themes in The Great Gatsby

7 Significant Symbols in The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby: Study Guide | SparkNotes
Most Important Themes in Great Gatsby, Analyzed
The Great Gatsby Analysis: What Does It All Mean? ✔️
The Great Gatsby Study Guide | Literature Guide | LitCharts

In “The Great Gatsby”, money intersects with class, and together they form a larger
theme running through the entire novel. Deliberately setting up his novel into distinct
social classes - the old moneyed, the newly moneyed, and the moneyless, Fitzgerald
leaves a strong reminder of the elitism occurring in every strata of society.
The 1920s in America, or “the Roaring Twenties,” – in the author’s phrase, “the jazz age”
– were a time of unprecedented post-war economic growth as well as radical changes,
both socially and politically. It was a time characterised by easy money (made by
bootlegging – smuggling or manufacturing and distributing liquor), and lavish parties
with a drunken frenzy – despite the Prohibition era – and dauntless optimism. Without
foreseeing the Great Depression and the Second World War that follows, the world
Fitzgerald presents in his most well-known novel seems apparently to head towards
disaster. Each and every one of the main characters (perhaps the narrator, Nick Carraway,
excluded) are materialistic, mistakenly place their faith in superficial external means, all
the while ignoring the cultivation of compassion and sensitivity that, in fact, tells humans
apart from animals.

The old money class, those families whose fortunes originated in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries and have built up powerful social and political connections, is
represented by Tom and Daisy Buchanan. The new money class consists of the many
people who are taking advantage of the burgeoning economy to make themselves rich,
represented by Gatsby, suspected of having made his money by bootlegging (smuggling
or manufacturing and distributing liquor). George and Myrtle Wilson are struggling
‘losers’ – the no money class.

The Buchanans represent the richest of New York’s old rich society. Fitzgerald presents
them with all the decadent qualities of their class – hedonism, wastefulness, and, above
all, carelessness. It is Daisy’s carelessness – carelessness with other people – that
eventually gets her the narrator, Nick Carraway’s, harshest condemnation.
Gatsby is just as rich – perhaps even more wealthy than the Buchanans – but he is far
from being their social equal: they still think of him as the nobody from nowhere. Daisy
genuinely loves him but in the end, she goes back to the life that protects her from the
world, including protection from her responsibility for her actions. She chooses not to
leave Tom for Gatsby. She simply cannot bear to lose the social advantages she has in her
marriage to Tom. Marriage to Gatsby would not affect her material standard of living but
by marrying him she will have placed herself in a less advantageous social class.

When, as a poor officer, Jay Gatsby was courting Daisy before he went overseas to fight
in the war they were in love, but he had to leave her. While he was away she married
Tom, but now, as they resume their affair, her excuse for having married Tom is “rich
girls don’t marry poor boys.” But it’s more than a matter of money it’s also a matter of
girls in the top social class not marrying boys who are not. The novel asserts that no
matter how rich you become in America you encounter a ceiling that prevents you from
achieving the American Dream.

George and Myrtle Wilson are portrayed as desperate. George desperately wants to buy
Tom’s car so that he can make a bit of cash by selling it on, and Myrtle gets herself killed
by a desperate bid to join her lover. Her association with Tom only occurs because she is
beautiful and sexy, and she’s likely to be dropped in favour of a new mistress at any time.
Wilson’s desperate financial situation has affected his health and he has no way of
making any improvement in his life. His final act is suicide. George and Myrtle Wilson
are two characters in The Great Gatsby representing the working class of society aiming
for the American Dream. George Wilson owns a run-down auto shop in the Valley of
Ashes and is doing his best to get business, while Myrtle Wilson chases after wealth and
status through an affair with Tom. However, both characters face a tragic ending in their
attempts to achieve the idealistic life: Daisy strikes and kills Myrtle with Gatsby’s car and
George commits suicide after murdering Gatsby. George and Myrtle’s deadly fates help
illustrate the novel’s pessimistic attitude toward the American Dream, symbolizing that it
is impossible to achieve. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the Wilsons as a tragic way to
demonstrate the unnatainable American Dream.

leaving a powerful reminder of what a precarious place the world really is

They have assumed skewed worldviews, mistakenly believing their survival lies in
stratification and reinforcing social boundaries.
The novel is a highly symbolic meditation of America in the 1920s, focusing particularly
on the disintegration of the American Dream in a time of unprecedented prosperity and
material excess.

Echoes of the American Dream pervade The Great Gatsby, which contrasts the supposed
innocence and moral sense of the "Western" characters with the sophistication and
materialism of the "Eastern" characters. Gatsby's lavish existence in the nouveau riche
Long Island community of West Egg, moreover, cannot ever compensate for his lack of
the more pedigreed wealth of East Egg.

Money
Money and wealth are key themes in the novel and function as identifiers of a character’s
social status. Tom, for instance, descends from “old money” and carries himself like
somebody who is accustomed to privilege and prestige. In contrast, the residents of West
Egg, including Gatsby, are members of the nouveau riche, a class of people who have
only recently earned their money, without having to rely on their family’s old money.
East Egg and West Egg themselves embody the divide between the old money and the
new and represent the social stratification apparent in New York City (and the nation as a
whole) in that time period.

Materialism
Hand in hand with money comes materialism, which stems from the desire for not only
wealth or privilege but things that will display one’s wealth. Hence Gatsby’s house, with
its hired orchestra and absurdly beautiful music rooms. Perhaps the best example of
materialism is Daisy’s acceptance of the pearl necklace worth $350,000 that Tom gives
her. Her affections are effectively bought by this necklace and by the promise of more
like it. Daisy wants nothing more than to be safe and secure financially. That is why
Gatsby has to be rich in order to win her back. Her materialism is more important to
Daisy than his love, whereas his love is more important to him than materialism in
general. This is the essential difference between Gatsby and Daisy.

Wealth, Class, and Society

The Great Gatsby's characters represent the wealthiest members of 1920s New York
society. Despite their money, however, they are not portrayed as particularly
aspirational. Instead, the rich characters' negative qualities are put on display:
wastefulness, hedonism, and carelessness.
The novel also suggests that wealth is not equivalent to social class. Tom Buchanan
comes from the old money elite, while Jay Gatsby is a self-made millionaire. Gatsby,
self-conscious about his "new money" social status, throws unbelievably lavish parties
in hopes of catching Daisy Buchanan's attention. However, at the novel's conclusion,
Daisy chooses to stay with Tom despite the fact that she genuinely loves Gatsby; her
reasoning is that she could not bear to lose the social status that her marriage to Tom
affords her. With this conclusion, Fitzgerald suggests that wealth alone does not
guarantee entrance into the upper echelons of elite society.

Class
In the monied world of The Great Gatsby, class influences all aspects of life, and
especially love. Myrtle mentions this with regard to her husband, George, whom she
mistook for someone of better “breeding” and hence greater prospects: “I thought he
knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe.” Similarly,
Gatsby’s pursuit of Daisy is bound up with class. Only after amassing a large fortune
does he feel able to make his move. At the end of the book, class dynamics dictate
which marriage survives (Tom and Daisy), which one is destroyed (George and
Myrtle), and which one will never come to be (Gatsby and Daisy). Only the most
affluent couple pulls through the events that conclude the book. In fact, it seems that
the accident may have brought them closer. When Nick spies on them through the
window, he reports that “there was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the
picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together.” Because of
their elite class status, Tom and Daisy share a belief that they are immune to the
consequences of their actions. In the final chapter, Nick calls Tom and Daisy “careless
people” who “smashed up things and . . . let other people clean up the mess they had
made.”

Money and Materialism

Everyone in the novel is money-obsessed, whether they were born with money (Tom,
Daisy, Jordan, and Nick to a lesser extent), whether they made a fortune (Gatsby), or
whether they're eager for more (Myrtle and George). So why are the characters so
materialistic? How does their materialism affect their choices? Get a guide to each of
the characters' material motivations and how they shape the novel.

Society and Class

Building on the money and materialism theme, the novel draws clear distinctions
between the kind of money you have: old money (inherited) or new money (earned).
And there is also a clear difference between the lifestyles of the wealthy, who live on
Long Island and commute freely to Manhattan, and the working class people stuck in
between, mired in Queens. By the end of the novel, our main characters who are not
old money (Gatsby, Myrtle, and George) are all dead, while the inherited-money club
is still alive. What does this say about class in Gatsby? Why is their society so rigidly
classist? Learn more about the various social classes in Gatsby and how they affect
the novel's outcome.

Wealth and class

The Great Gatsby depicts what we normally think of as a classless society. However,
the novel questions that, and portrays three distinct social classes: the old moneyed,
the newly moneyed, and the moneyless.

Class (Old Money, New Money, No Money)

The Great Gatsby portrays three different social classes: "old money" (Tom and Daisy
Buchanan); "new money" (Gatsby); and a class that might be called "no money"
(George and Myrtle Wilson). "Old money" families have fortunes dating from the
19th century or before, have built up powerful and influential social connections, and
tend to hide their wealth and superiority behind a veneer of civility. The "new money"
class made their fortunes in the 1920s boom and therefore have no social connections
and tend to overcompensate for this lack with lavish displays of wealth.

The Great Gatsby shows the newly developing class rivalry between "old" and "new"
money in the struggle between Gatsby and Tom over Daisy. As usual, the "no money"
class gets overlooked by the struggle at the top, leaving middle and lower class people
like George Wilson forgotten or ignored.