How important is class in Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby? One of the most important themes of the novel is the importance of class. Fitzgerald makes it clear that social classes are divided based on the environment, the possessions you have, and the way a given individual interacts and behaves with other people. This is demonstrated by Fitzgerald using powerful adjectives and verbs to describe to the reader what that character is like. I'm looking at the importance of class since that is the reason for the differences between the characters. Let's talk about Gatsby, Tom Buchanan and George Wilson. James Gatz, otherwise known as Gatsby, is depicted as someone very wealthy as he has purchased a gaudy mansion in West Egg and throws lavish weekly parties. He is like the hero of the novel; however, he is one of the many smugglers of the 1920s who made a fortune from crime committed in the past and became millionaires overnight. He struggles to forge a new identity with the material riches he has accumulated. He tries to defy traditional class boundaries to win back Daisy Buchanan, the girl he truly loves. Gatsby is one of the newly rich people who have no history of their ancestors in the past and these people are presented as very vulgar and ostentatious. . For example, Gatsby owns a huge decorated house. In The Great Gatsby, is it only wealth that decides which class a character belongs to? I think wealth alone doesn't decide what class a character belongs to. This is because Daisy, Tom Buchanan's wife, has no specific purpose in life. She can't even think for herself because she's never had to. Talk to Nick as if he were part of a group isolated from life in the East... middle of paper... York City is a long stretch of wasteland created by industrial ash dumps. It represents the moral and social decay that comes from the uninhibited pursuit of wealth, as the rich indulge in nothing but their own pleasure. The valley of ashes also symbolizes the plight of the poor, like George Wilson, who live among the dirty ashes and consequently lose their vitality. Throughout history many societies have had upper, middle and lower classes. The classes formed separate communities of different lives and never transcended social barriers. In the book The Great Gatsby, instead of streets and communities separating each class there was a sound. In West Egg, the rich received money not from inheritance but from what they had made themselves. They worked hard for their money and received no financial support