Natalie Davis
AP Lit
3 December, 2012
The Great Gatsby
The Power of Wealth
Fitzgerald uses his novel, The Great Gatsby, to portray the truth about how the wealthy live. Wealth acts as a wall for the rich to hide behind, stripping away the burden of being accountable. Wealth is also deceitful; it convinces the people of the higher classes to believe that they can get away with neglecting their responsibilities, forcing someone else to pay the consequences. The use of symbolism in the book enhances the understanding of how insolvent people glorify the idea of being wealthy. Once wealth is obtained, the individual will experience the crippling effect of wealth rather than feeling empowered. Wealth has the ability to dehumanize an individual, falsely lifting them up onto a pedestal.
Wealth has the defect of stunting the augmentation of a person’s character. The typical person experiences the transition of having the mindset of a child, to developing the mindset of a responsible adult. The characters in the Great Gatsby, Tom and Daisy, demonstrate the effect that possessing immense wealth has on the development of a person’s accountability. Daisy and Tom were taught at a young age that because of their wealth, they can do, say and have whatever they want. Consequently, Tom and Daisy act as reprobates, who deliriously believe that they are exempt from receiving any kind of punishment.
Daisy takes advantage of Gatsby, allowing him to take responsibility for the Myrtle’s death, which deceives Tom to believe that Gatsby was the culprit who killed his mistress, Myrtle. Furthermore, Gatsby is framed by Tom, and in spite of this, George, Myrtle’s husband, kills Gatsby and himself. Nick confides, “I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (Fitzgerald. 184). Tom and Daisy are inconsiderate and careless of how they affect the people around them. The lack of remorse that Tom and Daisy have is inconceivable. Nick accused them of retreating “back into their money” when they left town after Gatsby was murdered. Wealth stands as a wall for Tom and Daisy to hide behind, stripping them of their right to be accountable for their actions. But inevitably, someone else pays the price for the other’s actions, and this dehumanizes the person because they should be responsible for their own mistakes.
Daisy’s character is a symbol in the novel that represents the illusion of wealth. Daisy is also compared to a rose, enhancing the understanding of the reality of being wealthy; wealth is like a rose because it is attractive to the eye, but harmful at the touch. Nick contemplates Gatsby’s last thoughts, “He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is...” (Fitzgerald. 165). Daisy is the grotesque rose, but Daisy represents the underlying meaning of how a rose symbolizes the dream that Gatsby had of wealth, and how it seemed glorious from afar, but was grotesque in reality.
Gatsby used to view himself as unworthy of Daisy because of her immense wealth. Daisy was his motivation for becoming wealthy, because he was convinced that wealth determined worth, and when he was with her, “He took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously-eventually he took Daisy one still October night, took her because he had no real right to touch her hand” (Fitzgerald. 152). Gatsby put Daisy on a pedestal, almost as if she was of a higher breed of human, or not human at all. Wealth dehumanized Daisy through Gatsby’s eyes, convincing him that wealth would solve all his problems, and promote him to her level of superiority. Gatsby didn’t understand what he was wishing for, because he idolized something that was an illusion. Wealth was the cause of Gatsby’s downfall, proving that wealth does not protect, but it destroys those who have it. It is ironic that he dreamed for his entire life about this fantasy of happiness and that it would come from obtaining wealth, but all that came out of it was his death.
The deception behind wealth is ironic; people dream to obtain it, but after obtaining it, it is the cause for their downfall. Gatsby is depicted as the victim of his own aspirations, shedding light on the phrase, “Be careful what you wish for”. Wealth transforms the individual into a demoralized, inhuman version of themselves. It is evident that wealth is more of a curse than an advantage in how it affects a person’s character, or their well being in this novel. The novel was written to warn the readers about the power that wealth has on a person’s life, and that wealth should not be a goal, but a byproduct of life.
