The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath describe the two extremes of American society in the inter-war years. Gatsby lives in a world of wealth, decadence, luxury…. and unhappiness.
The Grapes of Wrath charts the journey of a family across states along Route 66, a journey full of poverty, despair, endurance…..and unhappiness.
66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert’s slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.
(From The Grapes of Wrath)
The Great Gatsby, published fourteen years earlier, inhabits a realm of riches:
There was music from my neighbour’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon, I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On weekends, his Rolls Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight….
(From The Great Gatsby)
Both stories move inexorably, and at a different pace, towards tragedy. One is marked by immense comfort and an absence of dignity; the other by an immense dignity and an absence of comfort.
