\u201cGatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor\u201d (150).<\/p>\n
This quote is interesting because it touches on how wealth can preserve things Gatsby values like youth and mystery but can also trap them in. Gatsby conception of time is not based on reality but instead on his own illusions of grandeur and making sure his love with Daisy is never unchanging. In this way, the promise of wealth and status are a prison that Gatsby cannot escape and because of this, is forever stuck in the past. Daisy\u2019s wealth protects her from the daily struggles of poverty. Fitzgerald alludes to how distinct social classes were in the Roaring Twenties. Though this era is closely associated with wealth and a booming economy, there was still a big part of the population struggling in the ashes not far from the social playing field of the elite. Gatsby himself desires the stability and pride in being \u201clike silver\u201d and not having to struggle to survive. The personification of struggles being \u201chot\u201d is also a good extension of how everything in the valley of ashes is dark, dirty and burned. The constant grind of living in such a place leaves you with no shine or vitality left.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cGatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor\u201d (150). This quote is interesting because it touches on how wealth can preserve things Gatsby values like youth and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":390,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-great-gatsby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/390"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}