Jay Gatsby's rise to wealth and popularity shows that social class is the theme of the Great Gatsby

The argument

The argument is that the structure of Gatsby's life, taken as a whole, is what identifies social class as the novel's governing theme. His wealth is not a starting condition but an acquisition: he grew up poor in the Midwestern United States and did not become wealthy until adulthood, so the book traces a movement between classes rather than a life lived within one. Each stage of that movement is organised around class rather than around incident. Working on a boat is where he learned the workings of the upper class, which frames the encounter as an education in a set of codes he did not inherit and had to study from outside. Service in World War I is followed by the period in which he began to earn money and a place in high society, the two presented together because in the novel they are not separable: the money is what purchases the position. How the money was made is central to the reading. Gatsby earned his income through the illegal business of bootlegging, and proponents treat the criminality as the point rather than an incidental detail. Legitimate routes to wealth are slow enough that they do not deliver a fortune within the span of a few years; an illegal one did, and it allowed him to become rich quickly enough to move to New York and pursue Daisy. Class mobility in the novel is thus available, but only outside the rules the established classes observe. The conclusion drawn is that this rags-to-riches trajectory supplies the theme rather than merely the plot. Social class is what motivates the characters, who are constantly trying to move higher in society, and Gatsby's rise demonstrates both the intensity of that motivation and the terms on which the ascent is actually possible.

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.