Scott Fitzgerald's Use Of Materialism In The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is known as “The Great American Novel.” Fitzgerald utilized symbols and motifs to achieve his purpose. He wants readers to realize the destruction a materialistic lifestyle has on an individual; that materialism leads to moral deterioration. Fitzgerald uses the wasteland between New York City and West Egg as a symbol of society’s moral decline. He also uses eyes as a motif to describe characters and to warn readers of the way society watches as materialism controls people. Half way between West Egg and New York rests the “valley of ashes” (Fitzgerald 23). This is an allusion to T.S. Eliot's “The Waste Land,” where materialism constantly destroys society’s morals. During the industrial revolution all the industrial waste was taken to a single place and left to be unseen. A ridiculous amount of creation lead to heaps of junk. Society threw away anything that wasn’t wanted, literally creating a wasteland, and figuratively diminishing all morals. Fitzgerald creates the wasteland to represent society’s obsession of materials. People are too concerned with how much they own to realize what is right and wrong. This is a prime symbol of society’s moral decline. The
The eyes often describe the characters, the “impersonal eyes” of Jordan and Daisy, the “faded eyes” of Wilson, the “unmoved eyes” of Gatsby all represent their characters (12, 157, 165). Daisy and Jordan have been completely absorbed by materialism and they can’t feel anymore, they have lost their love and compassion, they are impersonal. Wilson had just discovered his wife’s affair and shortly after she died. Because “Wilson had no friends,” his wife meant everything to him and now that she was dead he was distraught and fading (159). Gatsby’s unmoved eyes literally meant he was dead, he could not move them. Metaphorically his unmoved eyes represent the unchanging hope he had to repeat his past with