Vera Iwanoff

 

What Money Meant in The Great Gatsby

 

The Great Gatsby, originally a Novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald recently turned into a film (again), is a classic story involving the theme of the American Dream. The story is classified as a post-modernist romantic drama and is told in voice-over flashback.

 

 

The movie begins by showing the audience that the story took place in a time where the stock

market was booming, alcohol was flowing and the more people became aware of their

surroundings the more they were driven to drink. Most of New York would retreat to Long

Island’s, “West Egg,” where all of the “New Money,” was beginning to settle, due to the stock

market’s success. The easiness of the New Money, made being wealthy hollow, there was no

longer a drive to become successful (Info Refuge ).

 

Nick rents a cottage in West Egg for the summer, his neighbor happens to be Jay Gatsby. Gatsby

is mentioned multiple times before Nick meets him, although he sees him from the windows and

on the dock staring and reaching for something in the distance. It becomes clear later in the

movie that he is reaching towards the house across the lake, and he is reaching for Daisy.

 

Early in the film Nick introduces his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan, who is

considered to be “Old Money” and lives in East Egg. Buchanan refers to those who populate West

Egg as, “those social-climbing primitive new-money types.” 

 

Themes through out the movie are obviously money and the source of one’s money as well as social

class and the expectations that come with it.

 

 

Nick is finally invited to a party at Gatsby’s house. This is an interesting event because nobody was ever invited, they just came, and it seemed that the only place to be on weekend was Gatsby’s house. Nobody at parties knew who Gatsby was, or his history, there were many speculations but no facts. The parties thrown each weekend at Gatsby’s house were incredible lavish and raised many questions about who Gatsby was, where he came from and most importantly where his money came from. He is even described as, “richer than God.” It is unfortunate, though, because despite so much curiosity nobody bothered to really get to know the host of the parties they attended.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another important question that many ask, “What’s all this for?” The answer obviously being Daisy.

 

An important theme in the movie is The American Dream and its Decline in the 1920’s, (Churchwell, 2012). In the beginning of the movie, Nick begins narrating the movie in a psychiatrist’s office at The Perkins Sanitarium, suffering from Alcoholism. This is where he tells the story of how he met Gatsby and the reason for Nick’s downfall.

 

One of the first things Nick says is, “Back then all of us drank too much. The more in tune we were, the more we drank. And none of us contributed anything new.” This is a great indicator to suggest that The American Dream was on the decline. The American Dream is typically known as a journey in which someone works very hard and eventually reaches success. What Nick describes is a time when everything was flowing too easily, and people weren’t motivated to work hard. Instead they drank and chose to live in oblivion. Nick’s description of West Egg also suggests that money was coming a little too easily to those (including himself) who were living there.

 

“Stocks reached record peaks, and Wall Street boomed a steady golden roar. The parties were bigger, the shows were broader, the buildings were higher, the morals were looser, and the ban on alcohol had backfired. Making the liquor cheaper. Wall Street was luring the young and ambitious, and I was one of them.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a scene later in the movie which explains where Gatsby came from, and that he actually came from no money and happened to meet a millionaire who taught him “class.” From there he had to make his own way.

 

Another scene shows how Daisy and Gatsby knew each other, and how she waited for him to return from the war but once it was over he didn’t immediately return, he wrote to her that he was penniless and couldn’t come back to her, yet. Knowing that Daisy was a debutante and used to the finer things in life he wanted to give her everything he could. Gatsby’s American Dream was to be so incredibly wealthy that Daisy would want to be with him. While he doesn’t get his money in the most noble of ways, Gatsby comes from nothing and by recreating his identity he becomes successful, he becomes someone that everybody wants to be associated with, but not necessarily someone everyone wants to know.

 

At the end of movie Nick’s disdain for the hollowness of the wealthy is made clear, as he is Gatsby’s only true friend he sees how every one turns their back on him. Despite Gatsby’s gracious hospitality in the past. It seems that to Nick, Gatsby was a version of The American Dream, as he describes him several times as so hopeful. With Gatsby, the American Dream dies leaving Nick in a horrible depression.

 

Worst of all, Nick sees Daisy turn her back on Gatsby, which is incomprehensible to him. “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things and people and retreated back into their money and vast carelessness.” In The Great Gatsby, the sudden and easy flow of money initiated the Decline of the American Dream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Churchwell, S. (2012, May 25). Retrieved October 30, 2015, from The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/may/25/american-dream-great-gatsby

 

Info Refuge . (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2015, from The Demise of the 1920s American Dream in The Great Gatsby: http://www.inforefuge.com/demise-of-american-dream-the-great-gatsby