Sins in the Great Gatsby Essay Example
Sins in the Great Gatsby Essay Example

Sins in the Great Gatsby Essay Example

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  • Pages: 2 (547 words)
  • Published: June 29, 2018
  • Type: Essay
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Ever since God created man, man sinned. Man commits sins from the “Seven Deadly Sins” almost every day, so it is not uncommon for man’s ungodliness to be showcased in pieces of literature. One of these many pieces of literature is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Greed, Extravagance, and Envy portray and important role in this novel through the characters and demonstrate how sinful man has become. These three sins play a prominent role in The Great Gatsby and I will explain how in the following paragraphs.

To the main characters in the book, money is everything. Tom, Gatsby, and Daisy base their whole lives on money and its prestige. Daisy is the worst sufferer of greed; she married Tom for the sole reason of money. She then re-falls for Gatsby because she discovers he has mo

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ney now. Gatsby earned his money through bootlegging, showing how desperate he was for money; he sacrificed his morality for it. Myrtle Wilson, another sinner of greed, is only having an affair with Tom only because he has money and she lives in poverty.

Greed is what destroys Tom and Daisy’s marriage; they both wanted more than just each other. In this novel, money symbolizes a social evil; it corrupts people’s lives and destroys them. The main characters in the novel exemplify extravagance strongly. The characters all are very materialistic except for Nick Carraway. Nick is used to show how sinful the other characters are, opposed to him. Gatsby is the most materialistic; he spent his entire adulthood raising his status so he could show off all of his material things to everyone through his extravagant

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parties.

Tom believes that whenever he has problems with Daisy, he can just buy her something like a “pearl necklace” or “cuff buttons” to justify her happiness. Materialism leave these two men empty inside. Gatsby’s unfulfilled dream of getting Daisy back and his obsession with material things and Tom’s obsession with material things and money leave them both empty; their lives have no true meaning because of their extravagance. Envy envelops Tom, Daisy, Myrtle, and Gatsby and creates great jealousy among them.

Tom and Daisy’s affairs seem to exist to make each other jealous of the other because of their affairs. In addition, Tom’s mistress, Myrtle, is jealous of Daisy because she is married to the person she loves: Tom. This is the exact same case with Gatsby. Gatsby is extremely jealous of Tom because he has Daisy, his only love. Gatsby is also jealous of the people he invites to his parties. The people who come to his parties are from East Egg Harbor, the “old-money” town, and Gatsby wishes he was part of that group because maybe he could’ve married Daisy if he had “old-money” earlier.

The characters’ envy eventually just leads to lost hopes and lost lives. Greed, Extravagance, and Envy all portray a big role in The Great Gatsby. These sins control the characters and make them less of a human being. The only true role model in this novel is Nick who remains virtuous throughout the storyline. Nothing can be done to stop the great amount of sin man makes. As long as there is a human, there is sin.

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