Ms. Krupala
English III
March 3, 2017
The Great Gatsby Essay Throughout the years people in society have done anything and everything in order to acquire wealth. In the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby this aspect of society is portrayed greatly through the characters. In The Great Gatsby wealth is a very powerful symbol. During the 1920s everything and everyone revolved around money and the fact that the stock market was booming at this time didn’t help. Wealth can lead many people to become careless without even realizing it. Nick Carraway stated that “(s)tocks 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 overall people were becoming more and more careless (The Great Gatsby). Another example that …show more content…
Tom is a major symbol of a careless character because he was raised in wealth and inherited his parent’s estate which in a way made him very reckless because he’s never had to work for anything he’s ever owed and believes that he is capable of doing anything he wants without facing the consequences. For example, Nick states that “the fact that he “had some woman in new York” was really less surprising” proves to me that although Tom has everything and man could possibly want such as a wife, child, money, mansion, anything, he is still no content with his life and therefore decides to have an affair with Myrtle (Fitzgerald 20). Another example of a careless character is Daisy Buchanan, Tom’s wife, because in the novel you learn that she only married Tom for his wealth and even though Gatsby confesses his love for her she only uses him when she is unhappy with her marriage and in the end she still chooses Tom. Also, she is the one who killed Myrtle, but instead of taking the blame for her actions she let Gatsby take the fall and didn’t even bother to show up at his funeral. She is too much in love with her