Imagine a time when money is scarce and people have to move halfway across the country for work. Now imagine at that same time that there is a top 10% that has a large income that can do anything they want without fear of consequence. The former is a description of failure of capitalism in The Grapes of Wrath and the latter is a description of the failures of capitalism in The Great Gatsby. In The Grapes of Wrath the Joad family is traveling from Oklahoma to California, a distance of about 1,500 miles, in search of work to sustain their family. Their home in Oklahoma is taken by the bank because the farm is unusable after the dust bowls have started. The novel The Great Gatsby follows the lives of a few rich people and shows the way their money has the ability to do. Both Fitzgerald and Steinbeck condemn the idea of the …show more content…
At the climax of the novel Myrtle is killed by a car hitting her and it is told a little bit later that Daisy is the one that was driving. When Myrtle’s husband goes to Tom Buchanan’s house to find out what exactly happened Tom basically tells Myrtle’s husband, Wilson, that it is Gatsby who killed Myrtle. Because of this information, Wilson goes to Gatsby’s house and kills Gatsby and then himself. If you have not been keeping track that is three people dead that can be traced back to the Buchanan’s, yet they find themselves with no consequences. This is because as soon as this all happen they leave to tour Europe. This shows how little things such as death and murder affected people if they had money. Nick even meets Tom on the streets in the city, and Tom outright admits to sending Wilson to Gatsby and says that Gatsby deserved to die. This shows example shows the failure of capitalism because the rich has no consequence for hurting the lower