The Great Gatsby - Essay Example

Nick is arguably the most important character in the novel. Nick plays a key role in The Great Gatsby, he can be trusted as a narrator because whatever he says seems very genuine, this paper will shed more light upon this novel. The Great Gatsby is an intriguing novel which was first published in the year 1925, the First World War was fought between 1914 to 1918 and the novel reflects the happenings of the First World War in more ways than one. The Americans were well ahead of all their counterparts once the war came to an end, they were economically very sound and also had better infrastructure than most other countries, the same gave them an air of invincibility and they walked with their noses in the air.

The Americans also believed that everything could be purchased because it was boom time for the economy, the booming economy also instilled a lot of confidence in the Americans and they started purchasing goods on credit. On the other hand the war had also taken a toll on the Americans, the country had just started to recover from a major setback and everything was in real chaos. “Honesty is does not seem to determine which characters are sympathetic and which are not in this novel in quite the same way that it does in others.

Nick is able to admire Gatsby despite his knowledge of the man's illegal dealings and bootlegging. Ironically, it is the corrupt Daisy who takes pause at Gatsby's sordid past. Her indignation at his "dishonesty," however, is less moral than class-based. Her sense of why Gatsby should not behave in an immoral manner is based on what she expects from members of her milieu, rather than what she believes to be intrinsically right.” (The Great Gatsby)  During the First World War the Americans helped each other by several ways but all this changed once the war was over, the author has tried to portray greed, cynicism and indifference towards other people through his novel the Great Gatsby, it is not about just one man loving a woman, the novel has much more to it than just that.

“I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” (The Great Gatsby, Chapter 1) These lines were spoken by Daisy in chapter 1, she is talking to Nick and Jordan and this is what she hopes to do for her infant daughter. This goes to show that intelligence in women was not valued at all back then. The older generation wanted women to be docile and the younger generation wanted to derive physical pleasure out of females back then. Empty pursuit of pleasure is perhaps the highlight of this novel, the American dream becomes corrupt beyond imagination because of the parties thrown by Gatsby every Saturday.

The Americans who had fought the war became very disillusioned and money-minded, they started believing that money could buy anything and everything and this also marked the start of something which would prevail for several years and the same is also prevalent, there are many people who firmly believe that money would buy them happiness but the truth is much different from this. The Stock market started recovering and this resulted in people having access to a lot of money which they would blindly blowup on unnecessary things, the spending power had increased but the same also caused