Prejudice and discrimination!

[hi there]

Hey! I've just read this book and think its great as a social satire. One has the oppotunity to see how corruption of the media and how moral destruction flourished in 1920's America.

I've been looking at "prejudice and discrimination" in the book and i just wanted your views:

Jews = Fitzgerald could be anti-semantic because he has fused a ganstar criminal with Wolfeshiem, A Jew. But there are no specific places in the novel which hints at this. Any got any?

Blacks - Obvious. Just need to look at Tom's view in Chapter 1. However, someone has told me that colour symbolism is also related to this, like Daisy and Jordan wearing white dresses. Anybody want to fill me in hear or offer other places in the novel where rascism is pointed at.

Migrants (not so much immigrants) - clash between west and east, nick and tom, west egg and east egg etc.

Any other groups which are attacked in the novel appart from those above? Any opinions or things people want to add to this or disagree. I love hearing other interpretations, so please comment and help!!!! Thanks!!!

[bookreader67]

Or perhaps I should call them "girls" as Fitzgerald does throughout the book (although oddly at the end he does use the term woman more often).

Clearly Fitzgerald discriminates against women. They are portrayed as flighty and general lightweights, and yet lovely and precious and worthy of curious interest; really more like objects than people. They are left as shallow characters, although their external features are well described; even one who is central to the story like Daisy, we don't really get inside her head, she is just shown as a piece of rich fluff who is motivated by sheer boredom. Not even complex on the surface, and shallowly drawn.

And then he does all the typical things like describe women's weakness wrt alcohol (lots of women falling over drunk) and shopping tendencies and, of course, fainting. It's definitely all about a man's world to Fitzgerald.