The early twentieth century consisted with the duality between prosperity and corruption. In response to this veiled reality of the nation, some people sought to disillusion society from conforming with the problematic status quo, two of which were famous writers Zora Neale Hurston and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The two had their own respective grievances about the nation, but both used their writings to bring awareness about the follies of society. Hurston and Fitzgerald challenge the preconceived status quo of a perfect and progressive American society—set with values such as separate but equal, social classes, consumer culture, and so on—through their respective essay and novel, the former dealing with the erasure of African American culture due …show more content…
A common sight in both Fitzgerald’s book and early 1900’s era was the rich and their endless supply of wealth spent on lavish materials and events (17.5). Evidently, the possession of luxuries was a sign of status and wealth. The Great Gatsby characters embodied this excessive lifestyle of moral ambiguity and obsession of wealth through the effusive parties. This immoderate use of money reflected in the novel was analogous to the equally excessive spending of the upper class in the 1920s. The wealthy submitted to the persuasion of consumer culture, frequenting department stores tailored to their social class. Consequently, this huge influx of spending during a fragile bubble of economic prosperity brought upon the depression after the Roaring Twenties. Naturally, the rich had profitable sources of income equal to their expenditure. However, many profited through ill-suited means, such as the character Jay Gatsby who worked with gangs to illicitly sell alcohol during a time of prohibition. Similar to that, the rich utilized capitalism to profit off the backs of workers. Though the demographic of the upper class was the smallest of the social classes, they were always the ones profiting due to capitalism. As workers’ wages lowered and their expenses increased, the owners of companies and businesses received a large share of profits from products blue collar workers made. This unjust system hadn’t gone unnoticed as socialist activists targeted capitalism as the crux of the lower class’ suffering. Communist activists in America denounced capitalism as they promoted communism as a better