“Money can’t buy happiness”, but it can buy a Fitzgerald
novel to teach you why this is so. To say that one did not ever once dream of
wealth and luxury is something that everyone knows is false. Even from a young
age we dove headfirst into stories about princesses rising from rags to riches,
unaware that this is “once upon a time”: a time that cannot exist. The direct
correlation of happiness and wealth are as real as pink elephants. A common
theme among F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary works, both Dexter and Gatsby find
that their desire to have the image of a perfect life—a big house, money in the
bank, and the prettiest girl in the city on their arm—turns out to be their
tragic flaw. Fitzgerald uses rhetoric such as color symbolism with white, gold,
and green to symbolize wealth and purity; however, each are concentrated with
irony that is commonly found among satires. Although Fitzgerald’s famous
satires take place in the 20th century, the same flaws in human
nature and society are still prominent today. Unlike Moses, who may have been
able to part the red sea, society is not as able to part its subconscious flaws.
