Fitzgerald’s Critiques on American Capitalism in His “The Great Gatsby”
Abstract
The research aims to describe Fitzgerald’s criticism presented through the novel, and to identify the capitalism concept portrayed in the novel. The research reveals the existence of the capitalism in the form of literary work. Method in the research is the qualitative descriptive method with the literary sociological approach. Data in the research are the characters and narrator’s expressions performed and uttered throughout the work. The expression are situated in several fragments in the work and they are analyzed continually. The research result indicates that capitalism is portrayed through the attitudes of the charachters in the novel. They represents the materialism and capitalism which has certainly created the gaps in the social life by indicating the different places of the West Egg and East Egg. The other gap is the different status that the characters belong to. The capitalism is repeatable in our current life because morally the community nowadays has also been corrupted as has been presented in newspapers everyday, as the examples murder, rape, divorce, and abuse. Moral decadence is the result of lack of spiritual values, the impact of money or materialism, lack of performing religious duties, and like violating the social rules.
Downloads
Metrics
References
Alimanda. (1993). Sosiologi Perubahan Sosial. Jakarta: Prenada, Perpustakaan Nasional.
Crossman. (1996). Critical Evaluations of Selected Novels and Plays. Englewood, NJ: Salem Press, Inc.
Endraswara, S. (2008). Metodologi Penelitian Sastra: Epistemology, Model, Teori, dan Aplikasi (Revised Edition). Yogyakarta: Media Persindo.
Fitzgerald, F. S. (1925). The Great Gatsby. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Jones, J. E. H. (1968). Outlines of Literature. USA: The Macmillan Company
Levin, H. (1973). Literature as an Institution. England: Penguins Books Ltd.
Ratna. (2005). Relationship between novel and social reality. Jakarta: Perpustakaan Nasional.
Veblen, T. (1994). The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions, New York: B.W. Huebsch.
Copyright (c) 2016 Tsamratul’aeni

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
By submitting the manuscript of the article, the authors agree with this policy with no specific document sign-off required.
The authors certify that:
- if the manuscript is co-authored, they are authorized by their co-authors to enter into these arrangements.
- the work described has not been formally published before in a registered ISSN or ISBN media, except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, or thesis.
- it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere,
- its publication has been approved by all the author(s) and by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – of the institutes where the work has been carried out.
- they secure the right to reproduce any material that has already been published or copyrighted elsewhere (it does not infringe the rights of others).
- they agree to Ethical Lingua license and copyright agreement.
All articles published by Ethical Lingua are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
License and Copyright Agreement
- Authors retain copyright and other proprietary rights related to the article.
- Authors retain the right and are permitted to use the substance of the article in own future works, including lectures and books.
- Authors grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in Ethical Lingua.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in Ethical Lingua.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post or self-archive their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.