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Submitted By fatgode23
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Fitzgerald’s satirical portrait of modern society using Gatsby’s parties as support

“The Great Gatsby,” a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, depicts life in the 1920’s. “The Roaring Twenties,” a nickname given to the decade which was loaded with money and industry. It was a time where the rich people in society only had so much to do, and so much money to spend in many ways. Jay Gatsby, one of the “newly” rich people, chooses to spend his money recklessly; throwing large, extravagant parties every weekend of the summer. Fitzgerald paints a picture of modern society by writing about these crazy parties that Gatsby hosts; and using wealth to impress, lack of morals in modern society and The American Dream. All factors of how Gatsby uses parties for support and how the American Dream can be portrayed in the “Roaring Twenties.”

Gatsby’s parties were huge, they brought great numbers of people from all over New York, the people who came were all unknown to each other, not many people were actually invited, and they just came, not knowing Gatsby, they did not care about him. When Nick Carraway describes what he has seen before Gatsby’s party, “At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down....On the buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors d’ oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs...In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail....By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived” (44), he tells of the luxuries provided by Gatsby in order to accommodate and impress his guests. Fitzgerald is mocking the way people in modern society try to impress each other, in this case with wealth and materialism. Gatsby’s careless spending represents the amount of unpractical spending that when on in many peoples lives before the stock market crash in the Roaring

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