F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby can be considered a kind of prequel to the Great Depression. Its story of Midwestern social climbers, illicit money-making activities, lavish parties, and economic class distinctions makes the novel seem like a critical study of the wealth and excess that largely defined the 1920s before the infamous 1920s. stock market crash. For the most part, Fitzgerald’s novel is taught to high school students in conjunction with or as an introduction to the 1920s and the eventual Great Depression, America’s greatest economic catastrophe and likely topic of Macroeconomics discussion. PA.

The character of Jay Gatsby can be seen as a foreshadowing of the excess that characterized pre-Depression times. However, when we meet the main character, Gatsby, the smuggler Gatz who builds an empire of illegal smuggling possibly in an attempt to win back his true love, the upper class but married to Daisy, has already been dead for a while. Narrator Nick Carraway’s purpose in telling this story is largely to admonish society for its cold cruelty and reflect on the downsides of the mythical American Dream, all told through an autopsy of the final weeks leading up to Gatsby’s death. . Gatsby, with his unbridled opulence and his attempt at social ascension, has become our tragic hero of the 1920s rise and eventual fall of it.

We can see this idea in Fitzgerald’s critical construction of the Great Gatsby setting. Set in the wealthy “West Egg” and “East Egg” respectively—that’s Long Island and New York City for you—we as readers emerge into a social environment characterized as wealthy, educated, and socially exclusive and restrictive. Characters are hesitant to associate with others considered socially inferior to them, particularly in geographic locations. In fact, social status is everything and that status is usually tied to one’s financial worth. But even then, one’s social status, as in the case of Gatsby, isn’t as appreciated if it’s all about money and lavish parties. Despite his great wealth, Gatsby lives in the less prestigious West Egg, which implies that he has not fully ascended to the level of his beloved Daisy, a distance symbolically and geographically represented in the stretch of water between their respective houses. . The novel is haunted by such rigid class distinctions and the inability of most of the people in the novel to reach a level of equality with the upper class, making 1920s America almost like Europe. feudal. No matter how many colorful shirts, champagne-filled parties, or extravagant cars and people-killers he had, he could never be as worthy of Daisy in his eyes, even with her excesses. Her death is also largely symbolic. Wealthy Gatsby ends up murdered by a blue-collar auto mechanic while he’s relaxing in his personal pool. This event, interpreted after the Depression, suggests an equalization of classes.

In fact, the status quo depicted in this novel was turned upside down by the onslaught of the Great Depression. Of course, reading The Great Gatsby today with hindsight and the knowledge that four years after its publication the world’s economies would implode certainly influences readers’ interpretations. However, if Fitzgerald had been an economist, the Great Depression might never have happened. He seemed to know what kind of ruin the extravagance typified by Gatsby was heading for. The Great Gatsby, therefore, becomes this sinister book with impeccable foresight that not only critiques pre-Depression stratified society, but in its own way also advocates for the kind of equality or equal status that the Depression it will eventually bring, albeit destructively.