Great Gatsby1 essays

Great Gatsby1 essays 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 bridgeÃ…  anything at allÃ…  " 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 Eg ...