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Essay / Examples of Materialism in The Great Gatsby - 1318
F. Scott Fitzgerald's third book, "The Great Gatsby," constitutes the crowning achievement of his career. According to the New York Times, "The Great Gatsby" is a beautifully crafted tale about 1920s America. In the novel, the author describes Daisy Buchanan as childlike, materialistic, and charming. These characteristics describing Daisy also describe how women were perceived in the 1920s. Daisy is described as childish, because like a child playing pretend, she pretends to be someone she is not, she does not can't make up his mind and doesn't think about how his action will affect everyone. For example, Nick said: “The moment her voice stopped, ceasing to attract my attention, my conviction, I felt the fundamental insincerity of what she had said. In a conversation she had with Nick, she told him what she told the doctors when she gave birth to her daughter. She told the doctor, “And I hope she will be a fool – that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (17). She tells the doctor, just like her, that she wishes her daughter would be a fool and marry a man who will do anything for her and be like a trophy wife. She wants her to mainly use her beauty rather than her brains. Another example of Daisy being materialistic is between a conversation with Nick and Gatsby, and what Gatsby said was, “Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly. That was all. I never understood before. It was full of money, it was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell within him, the tinkling, the song of the cymbals. . . . high in a white palace, the king's daughter, the golden girl. . . . »(120). Here, Gatsby says that because Daisy has always been rich, everything she says is always related to money. Gatsby has the experience of being poor and rich, and when he says that Daisy's voice is full of money, he meant that because she has been rich all her life, there is a difference in how what a rich person talks about compared to an unhappy person. Gatsby sees that Daisy's voice has so much sophistication and upper class that it seems to be full of money, money that the rich always have. Another way F. Scott Fitzgerald describes Daisy as materialistic is when Gatsby said, "She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me." It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart, she never loved anyone but me! »(130). When Gatsby says that Daisy only married Tom because she was tired of waiting for him and he was poor, it makes the reader think that she chose money over true love. In the novel, women in the 1920s only cared about having fun and spending money. They did it