In the novel, The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald explains in many ways how the upper class, are different then the lower class. The lower-class is not as privileged as wealthy people because they do not have as much money to do whatever they want with. The lower class has to work hard to earn money, unlike wealthy people. You can obviously tell the upper class from the lower class because wealthy people display their money through their appearance.Fitzgerald lived in a time when wealth and indulgence prospered in the cities, when the upper class looked down upon all other parts of society as being inferior and insignificant. Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby is ...view middle of the document...
The narrator of the novel, Nick Carraway, and Gatsby live in West Egg, which is not as nice as East Egg where Tom and Daisy Buchanan live. The difference between Gatsby and the Buchanan's is not only in their different moral standards, but also in the way their wealth was collected. Tom and Daisy represent the 'old establishment', having lived in the wealthy upper class for most of their lives. Gatsby, on the other hand, is considered 'new money', in the sense that his wealth came to him more recently through his business dealings as well as his inheritance from Dan Cody. Tom ignores Gatsby's 'new money' and this resentment becomes even more intense as Tom becomes aware of the situation between Gatsby and his wife. On the other end of the spectrum is the Valley of the Ashes, which is socially nowhere. It is here that we meet George and Myrtle Wilson living in poverty in this industrial desert. It is incongruous that those who consider themselves socially superior are forced to drive through such a place on their way somewhere else.Fitzgerald asserts the idea that man needs to combine imagination and material values. He sh...
