How Does Fitzgerald Show the Importance of Society in the Opening Chapters of The Great Gatsby?
The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel penned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was an American novelist and short story writer. The tale of The Great Gatsby is set in a modified version of the Long Island and New York City area of the USA, with correlations to The Hamptons.
Throughout the opening chapters of the novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses a vast amount of characters, motifs and themes to show the importance of society. These can vary massively but all appear to imply how corrupt society was in the 1920s. He also shows how the innate social standing of people defines and limits them for the rest of their lives.
Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in the cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure seen within nearly all of the characters. Capital is one of the main focuses of the novel, and it becomes apparent that throughout the tale, it defines not only their social standing, but the level of respect which they receive along with how they are interpreted by others in the novel.
Fitzgerald begins the novel with an introduction from the narrator and one of the main protagonists, Nick Carraway. Carraway fought in the First World War, which we later find out he fought alongside Gatsby, giving them some form of common ground to base a ‘friendship’ upon. The novel initially begins with a poignant message from the father of Carraway; “When you ever feel like criticising anyone...just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had,” automatically informing the reader that there is differences in society, some which cannot be overcome. As The Great Gatsby is a prose text, the narrator can begin the text with a strong statement; in this case clearly giving the reader something to consider