Capitalism and Moral Corrosion in The Great Gatsby: A Marxist and New Historicist Reading

الملخص

The hypocrisy, which appeared after the First World War and fast industrialization of the twentieth century, has had a strong impact on the attitude of people to life and religion, morality and even to the belief in God. The modernist novel is a reaction to such a crisis and it tried to grapple with the non-stability and disillusionment of the time. The destructive influence of the war, as well as the rise of industrial capitalism put the society in a state of confusion and moral insecurity. The American society was restructured at all levels during the 1920s under the impact of capitalism that transformed the social values, class relations, and personal relations. Because of this the religious and emotional richness of life was slowly overthrown by materialistic seeking and shallow delight. This social corruption and moral instability were presented by modernist writers in their writings. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a society where material desire and the privilege of classes play the major role and civil moral institutions are subject to the economic strength. The paper presents an argument that moral decline in the novel is not caused only by personal frailty but it arises because of the capital system that was in place during the historical moment of the 1920s through a Marxist and New Historicist reading. The paper follows the path of corruption, hypocrisy, and two sidedness of their characters and follows the way the contemporary capitalistic culture impacts their actions and transforms their concept of love, loyalty, and integrity. Those characters reach varying social classes, the paper shows that moral decay cuts across the social fabric and identified capitalism as a phenomenon of history, creating ethical and spiritual instability and emptiness.