- Position‹5 of 5
- The Great Gatsby is about social class
- Argument1 of 2›
Jay Gatsby's rise to wealth and popularity shows that social class is the theme of the Great Gatsby
Gatsby started as a "penniless young man" then grew in wealth and society.
The argument
Jay Gatsby did not become wealthy until he was in his adult life. He grew up poor in the Midwestern United States. Then, he learned the workings of the upper class while working on a boat. After serving in World War I, he began to earn money and a place in high society. Gatsby earned his income through the illegal business of bootlegging. Despite being criminal, he was able to become rich quickly, which allowed him to move to New York to find Daisy. His story of rags to riches proves the theme of social class. It is what motivates characters since they are constantly trying to move higher in society.
Premises
Counter-arguments
The characters do not care about social class since they are already at the top of society. They know that their wealth and social connections will keep them in the upper class, so they don't have to worry about their status. Gatsby used his popularity in order to win back Daisy, not because he cared about being in the upper class.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] The biography is accurate and is summary rather than argument. That a character rises from poverty describes the plot; showing the novel is about class requires an account of what the book does with that rise, which the premise does not offer. [Rejecting P2] This premise holds the argument's real material and states it too narrowly. Gatsby's wealth being new and illicit matters because the novel repeatedly marks the distance between it and inherited money — the two Eggs, Tom's contempt, the guest lists — while "constant striving to rise higher" is not what the other characters do, as the counter observes. The Buchanans are not striving; their security is the point, and it is what lets them retreat behind their money at the end. [Rejecting C] The conclusion also treats the novel as being about one thing. Class runs through it, and so do the corruption of aspiration, the unreliability of the past, and the narrator's own compromised position — so the argument would be stronger as a claim about a central theme than as an answer to what the book is about.