The Great Gatsby

             Authors use themes to help explain an underlying message or idea in order to help teach the readers a lesson. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the themes dishonesty, money, and carelessness to portray the "roaring twenties" as an era that lacks moral values and how the desire for money surpasses everything.
             Dishonesty plays a huge part in the novel and is illustrated though the actions of Jordan, Myrtle, and Gatsby. Untruthfulness is one of the main characteristics that the readers identify with Jordan. "When we were on a house party together up in Warwick, she left a borrowed car out in the rain with the top down and lied about it-and suddenly I remembered the story about her that had eluded me that night at Daisy's. At her first big golf tournament there was a row that nearly reached the newspapers-a suggestion that she had moved her ball from a bad lie in the semi-final round" (62). Jordan does whatever she can so she will not be at a disadvantage or inconvenienced in any way and does not care who she hurts in the process. Nick discovers this flaw in her personality and even says "she was incurably dishonest," however; "dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply" (63). Another very dishonest woman in the novel is Myrtle, Tom's mistress. She lies over and over again to her husband, Wilson, about "going to see her sister in New York" (30), when she is really meeting Tom. Myrtle hides her affair very well and even in the end of the novel Wilson still does not know who is having an affair with his wife. Gatsby is a very mysterious character in the novel and no one really knows exactly how he earns his money. "It took me just three years to earn the money that bought it." "I thought you inherited your money," says Nick. "I did, old sport," he said automatically, "but I lost most of it in the b
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The Great Gatsby. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 17:16, May 19, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/22980.html