FREE ESSAY ON GREAT GATSBY

GREAT GATSBY

The more things change, the more they stay the same
The Times They are a-Changin', or so 60's singer/songwriter Bob Dylan thought. But have
we really matured enough as people to say that racism and prejudice are no longer words
in the English vocabulary? Most people like to think so, but the facts paint a different
picture. The novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald can be used to illustrate
these points.
In the mid-20's, when American author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby, it was
common to use words to describe African American people that today would be seen as
offensive and degrading. Mainly the sole purpose of using such words were to depict
African Americans as objects, not human beings. When Nick describes the two Bucks and a
Negro girl passing them in a horse-drawn carriage with a white chauffeur he thinks to
himself Anything can happen now that we've slid over this bridge?anything at all? This
shows how people in Fitzgerald's time reacted to free black families. Nick describes the
black males as Bucks because that's the name people used when they auctioned them off as
slaves. He couldn't just refer to them as men or gentlemen because it was inappropriate
to give blacks a high status.
Throughout the novel discussing the downfall of the white race is a common topic. Tom and
Daisy share thoughts about the downfall over dinner and Tom states that If we don't look
out the white race will be-will be utterly submerged, and Daisy follows that comment up
with We've got to beat them (minorities) down. Because nobody looks the same and because
people fear anything different, they had no choice but to fear minorities. If you were
not wealthy and white, you were feared.
But racism wasn't the only degrading thing in the book; characters spoke condescendingly
about people's financial status as well. If you lived in East Egg, you were wealthy and
glamorous. If you lived in West Egg, you were well off but not nearly as wealthy as the
people in East Egg. And because Nick lived in West Egg, Tom thought of himself as the
better man. Just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are, declares Tom to
Nick about his overrated ego. It wasn't only Nick who was the outsider, Gatsby was as
well. If Gatsby would've been rich in the beginning of his life, Daisy would have married
him instead of Tom, and Daisy proudly admitted that to Gatsby, but sobbed when she had to
tell Tom.
And now here we are in the late 90's and times are still pretty much the same. People
still think they are better than you are if they are richer or are a different race. A
recent article in the Sacramento Bee on Ex-Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke states facts
that show we really haven't changed. Duke, who is running for U.S. Congress states
proudly he will be the first to stand up openly and proudly to defend the rights of
Christian whites. He and Edward Fields read a 30-minute speech blaming Jews and Israel
for the ills of the world. They also stated that American culture is overly influenced by
African Americans and other minorities and that that should come to an end. Duke ended
his speech by saying, If we lose European Americans, we lose America. How can this be any
different than Tom's? If we don't look out the white race will be-will be utterly
submerged.
It was scary for me to see how similar Duke's quote and the comment made by Tom in
Fitzgerald's story are so similar after 70 something years. I guess that really does show
that even after all of these years, we still have not changed. I think rapper Tupac
Shakur said it best when he said, It's time for us as the people to start making some
changes?Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live, and let's change the
way we treat each other. Because it's up to us as the people to survive.
Bibliography
Great Gatsby, F.Scott Fitzgerald