How Did The Great Gatsby Influence The 1920s

Social Influences of the 1920’s in The Great Gatsby
The 1920’s was a decade full of careless spending, lavish lifestyles and the American dream. Anyone from anywhere could make it in life if they just worked hard enough. The 1920s proved to be a prosperous time for many, in fact so many people thrived in this decade that almost everyone thought that they would eventually grow to be very rich themselves. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby the sumptuous lives of the wealthy and the economic boom in America shaped the characters, plot, and setting of the novel. The effortless spending of the time influenced the lives of the characters as well as the background of the story.
Facile squandering seemed to be a hobby of the people of the 1920s, including Gatsby and Tom. Gatsby would throw extravagant parties where he did not even know most of the guests, all in a futile attempt
to impress the woman of his dreams. Tom bought furniture that he knew would not fit into his Apartment in New York. “The living-room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture too large for it” (Fitzgerald 29). This demonstrates careless spending because even though the furniture did not fit in the apartment Tom still spent the money to buy it. It was common for well-off people of that time to spend thousands of dollars in a single sitting for things that they did not need, “The wealthy disposed of some of their excess wealth in the late 1920’s by splurging on expensive ($15,000-$50,000) European cars like Mercedes and Hispano-Suiza which they imported into America” (1920’s-30.com). Bingeing on expensive cars is just an example of how people in those years spent their surplus cash. With America going through one of the biggest economic booms of its time, companies began to try out different advertising techniques, making the people more likely to spend the extra money on luxurious items such as clothing, cars, and houses.
The new-age marketing hypnotized many of the wealthy people in the 1920s; and the characters in the novel were entranced by it as well. Big corporate companies began to notice that people were buying more things at the stores pre-made rather than making it at home, and they took advantage of that. “For the first time, during the 1920s, companies began to change their advertising techniques in order to convince people that they had to have the latest available products…Advertising had one major focus - targeting consumer emotions, especially “consumers’ psychological needs and fears” (Batchelor). Many people were victim to the new way of advertising; which caused a lot of people to start boasting about how much they had spent to own their brand new item. In the novel Lucille bragged to Jordan about the price of a dress she once wore, “It was blue with lavender beads. Two hundred and sixty-five dollars” (43). One of the main things Lucille uses to describe her dress is the how much it cost; this showed how wrapped up people were with the mere fact about how much things would cost, and not the quality of the item. Lucille is just one of the many people that were so concerned about the having the next big thing; and it didn’t matter how much it cost, she just had to have it. Companies’ profits soared to unimaginable heights in the 1920’s mainly because of their new ways of advertising a product. With the new habits of the 20s, people began to think mainly of themselves than that of others. The egotistical thinking of the wealthy really began to blossom, if it did not benefit themselves in any way many people would turn a blind-eye to it.
Over the course of the novel Nick develops a close relationship with Gatsby that no one else really had.
When Gatsby passes away, Nick and Gatsby’s father are the only people to celebrate his life and show that they actually had cared for him. “I began to look involuntarily for cars. So did Gatsby’s father…the minister glanced several times as his watch, so I took him inside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn’t any use. Nobody came” (175). Out of all the people Gatsby had invited to his parties, all the people that would call him a friend, no one came to give their respects. The people of West Egg showed their true selfish colors in this passage, it didn’t matter to them that they’d visited Gatsby’s home numerous times or that they had once called Gatsby a friend. The self-centered attitude of the prosperous in the 1920s is expressed in this because no one cared about Gatsby’s family or friends or even Gatsby himself enough to stop by. The wealthy civilization of the 1920s just cared for themselves and how much money they could make and not about the people around
them.
The community of the 1920s lived for expensive cars, extravagant clothes and copious lifestyles. Some people would work their entire life just to say that they eventually got to be in the “wealthy” crowd. Gatsby strived to impress the love of his life with his success, but he ended up alone and forgotten. Hundreds of people ended with the same fate, people would dream of success but once they got it they would lose friends and family that they never thought would leave their side. The economic boom in the United States and the prosperous lives of the rich inspired the characters, plot, and setting for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

Works Cited
. 1920 's-30.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Nov 2012.