‘The Great Gatsby’ is a novel about a man, who tries to make it rich by following the American Dream to pursue the love of his life. ‘A Diamond as Big as the Ritz’ also has the themes of wealthy and immorality however the story is a fantasy of a hidden location. Nick Carraway and John Unger, who enter a desirable yet poisonous environment. F Scott Fitzgerald writes about how careless the vastly wealthy of America were around the time of the ‘Jazz age’ and how having a large amount of money led to immoral behaviour. The American society of the 1920’s participated in a lifestyle revolution and because of the stock market boom, the vastly rich spent their money on extravagant parties and expensive possessions. In ‘The Great Gatsby’ Fitzgerald
Gatsby wants the green light which represents his hope to meet Daisy again and a chance to win her back. “Gatsby believed in the green light”.
Gatsby creates an entire new persona for himself so he would be more appealing to Daisy but all he could do is make himself rich; he changes his name to sound richer. There are stories about him that suggests he traffics alcohol over the counter illegally so his wealth can grow. He buys a house in West Egg, near where he knows Daisy is living. His house is lavish and he throws elaborate parties. Later in the novel it is found that he simply did this to attract attention to himself, in the hope that Daisy would notice his lavish estate and wander over during one of his parties, but when Daisy does go to one of Gatsby’s parties she does no enjoy it and finds all the drunken people distasteful, “She was appalled by the west egg” and many things “offended her”. This is when Gatsby realises that even though they both have money, it’s a different kind of money and they are different people because even though Gatsby is wealthy he wasn’t born into the money like Daisy was.
‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’ is set before world war two, at this time the US had a tendency towards isolation before the rich and none rich, which is a theme we see in the story. The story criticizes Americans at this time saying that they are obsessed with wealth and American critics at this time did not react well upon the