" (p.186) .
Even for Myrtle it is the acquisition of vulgar objects which lifts her out of the poverty of her situation: .
"At the news-stand she bought a copy of Town Tattle and a moving-picture magazine.she let four taxicabs drive away before she selected a new one." (p. 32) .
Even her flat was " crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it." (p.35) .
Fitzgerald's vision of American society is not that of the superficial gloss of the "Jazz Age" but of a moral and spiritual wasteland symbolised by the "valley of ashes" surveyed "by the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckelburg" like some enormous impotent god: .
"But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground." (p.29) .
It is entirely fitting that they are literally an advertisement (cf. p.166) an image of the capitalist society. .
3) HOW DOES FITZGERALD SHOW HIS DISILLUSIONMENT WITH THIS WORLD? .
Through the narrator, Carraway:.
"When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart." (p.8) .
Tom also appears to be disillusioned: .
"Something was making him nibble at the edges of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart." (p.27.) .
Daisy might also be: .
"I"m glad it's a girl. And I hope she"ll be a fool- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." (p.24.) .
4) HOW DOES GATSBY PERSONIFY THE DREAM? .
At first, it would seem that he merely represents Conspicuous Consumption. Look at the opening to chapter LLI. Indeed, when he changed his name and took upon himself his new "conception of himself": .
"To young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, that yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world." (p. 106) .
HOWEVER HIS VISION GOES BEYOND 'I'HIS: ( cf p.
