The Social Conventions From the Early Twentieth Century- The Great Gatsby

        The Jazz Age is the decade of prosperity and riotous living and of bootleggers, gangsters, flappers and jazz music. Even though there were many social and cultural conflicts during this era, the novel The Great Gatsby doesn’t focus on the conflicts and the social chages but primarily focuses on the people, society and the social conventions/ morals of the time period. Although the 1920s were a time of cultural battlefields and was a time of struggle between the old and new America, the novel The Great Gatsby accurately reflects the American social conventions from the early twentieth century. With regards to all the social changes and cultural differences at the time, Fitzgerald only focuses the book on certain things that effected those times, such as bootleggers and the conflicts in American society that involve geographic regions. The novel shows the glamorous lifestyles of the era. The Jazz era is the era of change for the American society, which has significant differences in sexual morals, gender roles and fashion. But most importantly the Jazz era is the time, which morals started to decay and many people of the era thought that the changes were in undesirable ways. Fitzgerald does a good job of showing his readers about the undesirable changes in morals for the society, especially with the help of the characters of Tom, Daisy and Gatsby.                                                                                                                        

We can see the decaying morals through the relationships of Gatsby and Daisy and Tom and Myrtle. Even thought Tom and Daisy are married they both see and have feelings for other people too. This is an unappreciable behavior for me because I don’t believe that it is correct for married couples to have intimate relationships with other people of the opposite sex. Daisy doesn’t complain or get divorced with Tom because she has a mistress and neither does Tom, even though he knows about the relationship between his wife and Gatsby.                                                                                 

Street crime is an important part of the Jazz era, and it was mainly caused with the consumption of too much alcohol. Although it was illegal to sell and consume alcohol at the time, bootleggers, such as Gatsby made money by selling illegal alcohol to the society, which affected the society a lot. The novel doesn’t give insight to the problem of alcohol but we know that Fitzgerald focuses on the Gatsby’s mysterious job that is referred to as bootlegging. Bootleggers were an important aspect in the Jazz era because it was alcohol that affected the Jazz era the most, even more than Jazz music.                                                                                                                                                

Fitzgerald uses the characters as a way of showing the social conventions of the era. Different people refer to different changes or perhaps problems of the era and the relationship between all the characters show the difference in perspective and how people used to interact with each other. For example, the character of Tom also refers to the problem of ethnicity in America at the time. We know that there are many people that feel the same way about black people and people who don’t want black people society to get stronger. These people can be true racists like Tom and be disrespectful towards people that are not from the same ethnicity, race or even religion with them.
As we can see, Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby accurately reflects the American social conventions from the early twentieth century with use of characters and the characters relationships. It neglects the social changes and the conflicts of the era and primarily focuses on the morals of he society, which completely change in this era.