The idea that consumer culture and money drove human behaviour and thinking in the 1920s can be put to great contrast. One of the most obvious points being Gatsby’s lavish spending and taste for the exotic, and expensive, yet if you dig deeper you realise all this spending was for him to get Daisy, so really it’s not the money driving him, but love. It can be seen that money and consumer culture dominated behaviour and thinking in The Great Gatsby. I think that this is the case because of Daisy's strong draw towards money, Toms flaunting, Gatsby’s need to please and better himself and Jordan Baker being named after two cars and Nick falling for her, so in effect, falling for the money.
One of the most important themes in The Great Gatsby is its focus on money as the foundation of American society. At the turn of the twentieth century, immigrants were flocking to the United States by the millions because they believed in the American Dream of abandoning a past of poverty and embracing the possibility of rolling in money in the land of freedom and liberty. They fled the economic and political oppression of their own countries because they believed that in the United States, they could do anything that they put their minds to. Gatsby believes in that same dream and believed that he could win anything, even love, with money. With social mobility apparently possible for everyone during the 1920's, many Americans did try to involve themselves in "get-rich-quick" schemes that sometimes included illegal activities such as gambling and bootlegging, as the preferred scheme by Gatsby himself.
Daisy is the perfect example of obsession with money and consumerism when she is shown round Gatsby's