The Great Gatsby Essay

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Achieving large amounts of wealth can cause one to have distorted perceptions of themselves and question their self-worthiness. Money can make one feel more important, powerful and happier than others around them. This powerful feeling can be put into doing good things, or have a negative impact on how one sees themselves. Money makes Gatsby feel happy as he throws huge parties where “The bar is at full swing” (Fitzgerald 42) and “People were not invited – they went there.”(Fitzgerald 43). Gatsby spends huge amounts of money for these parties but doesn’t enjoy them. However, Gatsby continues to throw glamorous parties hoping to attract Daisy and wishing to get her love. Gatsby believes that love and happiness can be bought with money and that he can buy Daisy’s love away from Tom. Gatsby is hoping to attract Daisy will all these glamorous parties and wishing that Daisy will love Gatsby. Since Gatsby is “new money”, Gatsby feels the need to show off his money and tell the world about his wealth. By showing off, Gatsby feels powerful and in charge. Like Gatsby, Sam Polk feels the same sense of power when he makes money. “They didn’t just have money; they had power — power beyond getting a table at Le Bernardin… They were royalty.” (Polk), to Sam Polk money is a way to gain power as describes fellow Wall Street traders. According to Sam’s councillor, Sam’s dream to attain money is to overcome the feeling of helplessness. Sam always felt helpless when he was young. To overcome this feeling of helplessness, Sam got addicted to drugs and alcohol and then later to money. Attaining more and more money made Sam feel as if he could do anything in the world and this made him greedier and arrogant.

Wealth has allowed people to accomplish whatever their heart desires. Sometimes these accomplishments are for the greater good of the world and sometimes they are not. An addiction to wealth can cloud one’s mind to deprive them from compassion, to weaken their ethics and disfigure their views of themselves. People who are addicted to wealth believe that the only way to attain complete happiness is by having more and more money. Thoughts such as these cause them to drift away from the person they were before they were wealthy. Sometimes that change can be for the better, other times it causes one to become unfriendly, selfish, and distant.