Old Money, New Money, and Everyone Else

Back then the early nineteenth century, you were either born rich or worked your whole life getting rich. Renown families that have been rich forever pass down their wealth to the next generation, such as Daisy Caraway from "The Great Gatsby". Daisy is a young women with money. to spend on anything, but her cousin Nick Caraway has a different mind set. Nick himself went to school at Yale, and worked his way up in life to live in a small house in West Egg, a community in Long Island; for people like Nick, people just starting off their life of being rich. On the other side of West Egg live people like Daisy, who have had their money inherited by family ties, hence the title "Old Money, New Money". Daisy can he symbolized as the aristocratic lifestyle of the Gilded Age. Daisy has no worries, and any of her problems could be solve with money. She doesn't know the true value of money because she hasn't worked up for it, she hasn't worked for anything in her entire life. This is the same reason why she lets her husband cheat on her, because she doesn't want to work for his love. That laziness is the affect of the Old money, it makes people less penchant to what they want, plus they can always replace things with a few extra bucks. As for Nick, her symbolizes the hard working efforts of the people during the 1920's. Nick worked hard to get her he was, trying his best to be in the wealthy status of his fellow neighbors. He reserves his judgement, as for he knows that he can't replace the people around him. The affect of the New Money can be seen as one that shows how the materialism during the Gilded Age drives people into wanting the things that the rich have. As for everyone else, they have it even harder. If they try investing money to get rich, they can lose it all and end up in the slums. And if they don't work their butts off for 40 hours a day in sweat shops, then they will also live in the slums. In a nutshell, the Gilded Age was all about how materialism changed people, from making them able to spend money whenever they want, to making the work hard in life to get to that life style.