Connor P. Williams, senior researcher in the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation, once said that, “American social mobility is now more fiction than fact...Top or bottom… Once you’re sorted into one or the other, your position is probably permanent.” This observation is highly relevant when it comes to Gatsby’s life, and his struggle of becoming something he’s not; not only wealthy, but also upper class. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses cars as symbol of mobility, but only among the rich, never extending this concept to the poor. Although Gatsby achieves monetary success, all his efforts to gain acceptance into the elite class result in failure and catastrophe. Fitzgerald establishes Gatsby as impersonator
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In America during the 1920’s, owning a car symbolized wealth and affluence. Gatsby, trying to prove his wealth and affluence, drives around an over the top yellow Rolls Royce. Nick comments that “everyone” has seen Gatsby’s flashy car that has, “a rich cream color, bright with nickel” and is “swollen here and there in its monstrous length”. Nicks description of the car includes cacophonous diction like, “swollen”, “monstrous” and, “green leather conservatory”, to reveal that the seemingly opulent car is—in reality—tacky, uncomfortable and a sham. The misleading nature of the car reflects Gatsby himself, as he is too is trying to fool everyone into thinking he is of higher class than he actually is. The over the top and complex characteristics of the car, with its “triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes”, reflect Gatsby's own need to excessively display his wealth in the attempts to prove his worthy status. Fitzgerald includes that the car was “terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns”. The use of the word “mirrored”, implies that Gatsby is an imitation and reflection of something he longs to be: elite and high class. This notion further hints to his illegitimacy and status as a “nobody”, in which he so desperately tries to change. The car is a way Gatsby
In America during the 1920’s, owning a car symbolized wealth and affluence. Gatsby, trying to prove his wealth and affluence, drives around an over the top yellow Rolls Royce. Nick comments that “everyone” has seen Gatsby’s flashy car that has, “a rich cream color, bright with nickel” and is “swollen here and there in its monstrous length”. Nicks description of the car includes cacophonous diction like, “swollen”, “monstrous” and, “green leather conservatory”, to reveal that the seemingly opulent car is—in reality—tacky, uncomfortable and a sham. The misleading nature of the car reflects Gatsby himself, as he is too is trying to fool everyone into thinking he is of higher class than he actually is. The over the top and complex characteristics of the car, with its “triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes”, reflect Gatsby's own need to excessively display his wealth in the attempts to prove his worthy status. Fitzgerald includes that the car was “terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns”. The use of the word “mirrored”, implies that Gatsby is an imitation and reflection of something he longs to be: elite and high class. This notion further hints to his illegitimacy and status as a “nobody”, in which he so desperately tries to change. The car is a way Gatsby