The Great Gatsby : the Unbreachable Gap of Economic Class Essay Example

Social mobility – it is the primary effect of the American Dream, which itself is an idea that seems simple, but is peculiarly hard to define. At the root of it is the sense of a society’s lust for success obtained by hard work, honesty, and modesty. If in fact this Dream were in the reach of anybody, then society would exist as a community where "all men are created equal" and everyone would have the opportunity of social mobility by doing the best for themselves as they could. But the reality of American society is cruel. A once high, mighty, and pure ideal has become degraded and buried by the inhumane lust for money. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book, The Great Gatsby, many of the characters, the significant one being Gatsby, believed in the Dream and that wealth and social mobility was within his or her reach. The social hierarchy of the times plays a very meaningful part in Gatsby’s lust and love-life. Fitzgerald illustrates three specific social classes: old money, new money, and the lower class, with old money and new money taking center stage. Gatsby, himself, represents new money: He climbed the social and economic ladder and succeeded by way of shady dealings of bootlegging. On the other hand, Daisy Buchanan, the love of Gatsby’s life, represents old money. She received everything she has on a silver platter; she earned nothing but her inheritance. At the time of the novel (Raging 20’s), Daisy’s social mold resent Gatsby’s kind because his kind are, in essence, the poor wrongfully belonging in the realm of the rich, opposed to those born rightfully rich. Gatsby, aware of this segregation, attemps to act as though he is ‘old’ money in order to be accepted by Daisy’s class. By illustrating social-economic class differences through Gatsby and his lust for Daisy, Fitzgerald depicts the mistaken hype of the corrupted American Dream and the unbreachable gap of economic class.

It is self-evident in the novel that Gatsby’s main goal was the pursuit of Daisy and