Morality In The Great Gatsby

Humans define Morality as a set of principles designating the good from the bad in behavior and ideology. We use it to guide each other and set parameters for acceptable actions, but these parameters change over time. In the 1920’s, several factors resulted in a more loose morality, much of which encouraged dishonesty, including drinking in backlash against prohibition laws. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, characters constantly lie to or outright deceive each other. The narrator, Nick Carraway, extols his own honesty, but as his audience we see how he repeatedly withholds information from his peers in important scenarios. Jay Gatsby, the man Nick follows in the story, much more blatantly lies to others about his rise to fame, making …show more content…
But though he does not actively try to deceive others, unlike some characters, that does not mean he does not lie. He has the habit of consistently failing to state what he knows at opportune moments, and thus lies by omission, often hurting others as a result. Nick goes with Tom himself to see Myrtle Wilson, whom he has his affairs with. One may think that he may do this so he can tell his cousin Daisy who Tom cheats on her with, but never does this. Later, when Daisy kills Myrtle while driving Gatsby’s car, he does not notify anyone of the situation. The only time his omissive lie has a somewhat positive result comes at the end, when Tom says Gatsby deserve what he got for “killing” Myrtle, though it was Daisy driving the car: “There was nothing I could say, except for the one unutterable fact that it wasn’t true” (Fitzgerald 178). In the other situations, Nick did not want to burden Daisy or Gatsby with troublesome news. In other words, he lacks foresight. 1920s culture encouraged this behavior in many forms, including the materialistic parties on West Egg. As a result, both “lies” led to misfortune for both parties, especially Gatsby, who Mr. Wilson murdered because his car killed his wife. Many Americans felt the aftermath of the “live for now” mindset when the Great Depression occurred. And …show more content…
Unbeknownst to anyone else, he hailed from the plains of North Dakota, and moved to the East Coast and amassed his wealth to attract the attention of Daisy, whom he had previously loved prior to leaving for the war 5 years before. He never tells anyone, however, creating an air of mystery around himself. While certainly shady, in Gatsby’s case hiding his past from his peers did not hurt any of them. However, Gatsby achieved his wealth through incredibly dishonest and illegal means. He made his fortune in the bootlegging business, assisted by Meyer Wolfsheim, a gambler responsible for fixing the 1919 World Series. As Tom Buchanan tells Daisy after revealing Gatsby’s secret to her, “I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn’t far wrong” (Fitzgerald 133). While Tom has proven himself to be prejudiced previously, more people than just him may have taken suspicion to Gatsby’s sudden rise to affluence. But they also likely drank illegal liquor at the extravagant parties that Gatsby threw. And though Gatsby took a role in actual criminal activity, many more broke the prohibition laws of the time, demonstrating that society as a whole promoted breaking the law. Gatsby and his patrons sold and bought contraband in secrecy, a form of dishonesty on a governmental level that, at the time, was perfectly acceptable in public society. By the end of the book, many of Gatsby’s friends and

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