Throughout the years there has become a mythos of ""the great American novel", a novel about American ideals so well written it could be interesting to anyone. Though it is said that no novel has quite reached this perfection yet, a few have come close. And "The Great Gatsby" by Fitzgerald is a strong contender. This novel written and placed in the nineteen-twenties paints an interesting picture of the life of the wealthy and careless. I will now take a look at how the novel meets with its two main themes, the corrupting power of money, and the journey to self-discovery.
At once when one start reading "the Great Gatsby" by Fitzgerald you are introduced to the decadence and carelessness of the wealthy people living on Long Island, a great setting for a novel detailing the corrupting power of money. The inhabitants of Long Island seem to have it all, but none of them are truly happy. We immediately meet Tom and Daisy, the truly rich, which live in seemingly sugarcoated lives surrounded by luxury. Daisy was happy when she was young; she truly loved Gatsby. But he did not have enough money for her, she wanted a better (in strictly the materialistic sense) life, and forsake here true love for Gatsby for the life Tom could provide. This was her tragedy, instead of the life of true love with Gatsby she has been corrupted by the wealth of her life and has become little more then a shell of a person. She has no responsibilities and no ambitions she has lost any meaning in life except the endless decadent way of swimming around in luxury in order to make the time pass. When Nick comes to see her she thinks for a moment about doing something, taking the initiative: "What'll we plan? What do people plan?".
This lifestyle has even robbed her of her morals; she doesn't have any real qualms about running the other woman over, and when Gatsby is killed, she doesn't even show up or send a message to his funeral.