Wealth and Immorality “You notice that they’re lived so long apart from the world that their original dialect has become an almost indistinguishable patois.”
--Excerpt from The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (P17)

“Below them there had appeared a large hollow in the earth shaped like the interior of a bowl. The sides were steep and apparently of polished glass, and on its slightly concave surface stood about two dozen men clad in the half costume, half uniform, of aviators. Their upturned faces, lit with wrath, with malice, with despair, with cynical humor, were covered by long growths of beard, but with the exception of a few who had pined perceptibly away, they seemed to be a well-fed, healthy lot. ‘Well, how are you, boys?’ He inquired genially. A chorus of execration in which all joined except a few too dispirited to cry out, rose up into the sunny air, but Braddock Washington heard it with unruffled composure. When its last echo had died away he spoke again. ‘Have you thought up a way out of your difficulty?’ ” --Excerpt from The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (P18)

In the short story, “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” Fitzgerald frames an exquisite and gorgeous chateau on a diamond mountain. In this chateau, lives the richest family in the world—the Washington family. Braddock Washington, the householder of the family, is an extremely selfish and cold-blooded man. He views everyone with suspicion. In order to keep his innumerable money, he imprisons or kills people who unfortunately discover the chateau. Also he tricks Negroes into serving his family submissively by telling them the slavery is never abolished. Mr. Washington’s desire for money corrupts him. By concentrating on diction, syntax, character’s descriptions, the author raises an argument that Braddock Washington’s huge