Tuesday, September 10, 2019

What scenes in The Great Gatsby demonstrate wealth and excess?

A scene that demonstrates wealth and excess is Gatsby's party in chapter 3. Here we learn of all the extravagant preparations that go on for one of Gatsby's parties: Nick tells of the deliveries of great numbers of oranges and lemons, the multitude of Christmas lights strung, and the music provided by a large orchestra. He describes the great piles of hams, salads, pastry pigs, turkeys, and alcohol brought into feed the hundreds of guests.
Later, in chapter 5, Gatsby demonstrates his wealth as he shows Daisy around his mansion. Nick records it as follows:

We went upstairs, through period bedrooms swathed in rose and lavender silk and vivid with new flowers, through dressing rooms and poolrooms, and bathrooms with sunken baths...

He even shows Daisy all his shirts in their multitudes of colors:

He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher—shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange with monograms of Indian blue.

Daisy is so overwhelmed by the sight as well as, we might imagine, her reuniting with Gatsby after five years that she starts to cry.
Daisy and Tom's house also shows wealth and excess. When Nick goes to visit it in chapter 1, he describes it as a "red and white" colonial mansion overlooking the sea with a private beach. He notes sundials and gardens and says it "was even more elaborate than I expected." This home too, like Gatsby's mansion, has large rooms and servants, though its wealth is more understated. Nick mentions that Tom owns a string of polo ponies, a sign of great wealth:

he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.

Although Nick lives relatively modestly in a much smaller home, he is surrounded by wealth.

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