Theme Of Materialism In The Great Gatsby

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Fear is created by the mind as a natural defense mechanism to protect you. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the main protagonist Nick Carraway faces a major dilemma that takes place in New York during the roaring 20s. He gets stuck in between his cousin’s marriage which causes major problems. Nick feels trapped and tries to help everyone even when he is scared of his cousin Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom Buchanan. His neighbor, Jay Gatsby introduces him to a new lifestyle and shares his darkest secrets. Gatsby lives and strives for this “American dream” all the way to his very last breath. But why did F. Scott Fitzgerald write it to where he wouldn’t get the girl?

Materialism is shown in many ways throughout The Great Gatsby, in more ways than one. "But as I walked down the steps I saw …show more content…
F. Scott Fitzgerald displayed this greatly, making it easy for the reader to depict how materialistic the people are. That they don’t care about these people’s actual selves. But their own social status. “Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.(Fitzgerald 158)” This quote by Meyer Wolfsheim is exactly what the people in The Great Gatsby need to hear. Though, Wolfsheim was never a friend of Gatsby’s when he was alive, he didn’t show up to his funeral because he didn’t want to pretend that he was his friend after death. When Gatsby had put together those parties for years he held them every weekend and all of the people would just come through to party. Yet none of those people genuinely cared, none of them had an ounce of interest in Gatsby as a person. Once he died, the parties stopped and these people didn’t have any concerns and the emptiness of the people are demonstrated through this moment in the book. It is truly powerful and alarming how these people, all they wanted was to party and get
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