The Roaring Twenties and the Effects of Consumerism in Fitzgerald’s Novels
The Roaring Twenties and the Effects of Consumerism in Fitzgerald’s Novels

Summary/Abstract: Throughout all his novels, Fitzgerald demonstrates that materialism and consumerism may lead to the individual’s disillusion and unhappiness. People, being focused on acquiring wealth and displaying their money and power, forget about the essential things of life, and generally they end up empty and unfulfilled. The double nature of money both empowering and dangerous leads individuals to their rise and fall, destroying not only them, but also the people close to them. Through Marx’s concept of commodity, the article aims to demonstrate that people are dehumanized, while things appear to take on animate power. The more people lose their subject position and become objects, the more objects shift into subject position. Hence, social relations are transferred from people to things.

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