Essay Conflicting Perspective in The Great Gatsby

The 1920s prove to be an era that brought around some of the greatest influences and some of the greatest controversies. In the 1920s, there began to be a schism in the beliefs of prohibition, personal freedoms, and class separation. Traditionalist believed that people were running ramped drink and being promiscuous. Modernists were out to seek personal freedoms, such drinking, sexual experimental, women coming out of their stereotypical roles of being reserved and prude. Classes divided because some people had inherited wealth and other had work hard to earn their money. In The Great Gatsby, a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, these controversies that divided the generations of the 1920s included prohibition, and the right to personal†¦show more content†¦At all the parties that Nick attends at Gatsby’s house and the one at Tom’s apartment there is alcohol present, even though it is illegal. â€Å"In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stoc ked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another† (Fitzgerald 44). People came to these parties and got completely drunk, to the point of make themselves into spectacles and fools. Even though the people of East –Egg were snobby toward the people of West-Egg they still attended Gatsby’s parties, and anyone else came who thought they should be there. â€Å"I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited – they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island and somehow they ended up at Gatsby’s door† (45 Fitzgerald). It was like the parties that occur today, everyone meet at someone’s home and then caravan to where there would be alcohol. In history, prohibition was a failed attempt at what was thought to be a progressive reform. The modernist of the period did not feel that prohibition was a progressive reform as it was made out to be, they felt that it was an infringement on their personal freedoms. â€Å"I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library†(Fitzgerald 50). 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