Comparison of the twenties as portrayed in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby Parallels between society today and society in the twenties are numerous and easily identifiable. Our economy, our morals, and our crime are identical to these of the Jazz Age.
Today, the confidence in the stock market is high. A stock crash is predicted within the next five years. The stock market and booming economy were the two things that drove the spirit of the Twenties.The crash of Twenty-nine put the entire country into the great depression because people were to dependant on the stock market for income.
If we have another crash like that of Twenty-nine, who knows what the effect would be on the world's economy. Bill Gates recently donated twenty billion dollars toward scholarships for minorities. It would seem then, that philanthropy now, is at its greatest. But philanthropy is the attempt to better the human race in general, not just minorities.Suppose for a second that this was not an act of humanitarianism. Mr.
Gates benefits in several ways by this donation: firstly, he receives acclamation; secondly, this gives him an enormous amount of positive P.R. to combat the negative attention he is getting from the monopoly deposition; lastly, if these people are educated, it further drives the economy making his business even more successful than it already is. The Twenties is very well known for its philanthropy; men like Rockefeller, and Carnegie donated millions to charity but we must also question their motives.People asked Mr. Carnegie why he "gave away" so much of his money; he replied: "The day is not far distant when the man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which was free for him to administer during life, will pass away "unwept, unhonored, and unsung," no matter to what uses he leave the dross which he cannot take with him.
Of such as these the public verdict will then be: "The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced." Such, in my opinion, is the true gospel concerning wealth, obedience to which is destined some day to solve the problem of the rich and the poor."- Andrew Carnegie On the outside, this quote implies that money is only for use, and what better use than benefiting the poor. What if we assume Mr.
Carnegie a stingy man? We could then infer that he wants acclamation, and that he doesn't think that heirs to his fortune deserve it.Perhaps this is the reason for donating a thousand libraries across the nation. Computers are being made cheaper and cheaper and are becoming standard in ever household. The entire world agrees that this is a good thing.
It may be, but we must notice that Henry Ford was doing the same thing with cars by mass-producing them during the Teens and Twenties. The quintessential moral person should be the President of a nation.Bill Clinton, who was impeached and almost thrown out of office in 1998, shows the low standard of moral in the nation effectively enough. Warren G. Harding, who served from 1921 till he died in 1923, displayed the same type of disregard for morals that Mr.
Clinton has. As well as being known as a womanizer, several of his cabinet members and he were involved in a theft scam. They stole over two hundred million dollars of tax money over a two-year period.An investigation was underway when Warren Harding died of an Embolism in San Francisco. As well as the officials, the children should show the morality: "Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them." -James Baldwin(US author) Even though this horrendous act was blamed on violence in movies, the Columbine shooting says enough about the morals of modern children and how skewed they are.
During the Twenties, two teens, Leopold and Leon, decided to commit the "perfect murder." They did not succeed because they were caught, but this definitely says something about the attitudes, and morals of the nation during the twenties. These are without a doubt, the worst two happenings of children's violence in our nation's history. Finally our government's war on drugs is as feeble as was the war on alcohol during the twenties. Drugs are illegal, but they are easy to acquire for anyone.
Alcohol was illegal during the twenties, but it was served at all privet parties, and it was fairly easy to bootleg liquor from any other country or anywhere else in the nation. Even though it may seem that we are in an absolute "golden age", it may be the opposite.Or it may be true, but it must be noticed that after every "golden age" in the history of the world, there has been a period of suffering and pain. Submitted by Bo Diamond ().
