Legal and Illegal Business Ethics Book Report

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Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald's book, The Great Gatsby, is iconic for a period and a place where the world was caught by the mad drive to recover from the trauma of a world war. The meeting with the specter of death on a mass scale in a time when everybody thought wars were a thing of the past had left the young generation desperate to experience everything there was and live life to its fullest.

Alcohol prohibition had created the perfect frame for this post American war world: everybody rushed in to break the law. The business savvy were in Heaven: no schooling was required and the merchandize was in high demand. All it was required was the will to get to work and make business with whoever was willing to supply the booze. Money had no smell. Fitzgerald, who had lived in both the old and New World and lived through the Great War as combatant, translated his own experience as well as what he witnessed in the U.S. after the war in this book, creating characters that continue to speak to generations long after that era was gone.

There was nothing new about the story of the old and new money in America. Just as the Civil War had brought the nouveau rich in the scene, The Great War had recreated the opportunity for some to jump into the saddle and start earning. Since history repeats itself, for the old money, it was precisely the lack of smell that made it impossible to accept the new money in the ranks of respectability.

Characters like Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan are supposed to be in opposite corners of the boxing arena only because of the age of their wealth. Tom Buchanan should stand as the proud representative and inheritor of a respectable wealthy family that earned incommensurable amounts of money along several generations, supposedly by living the American dream. Daisy, whose family was far less wealthy but as respectable, apparently giving in to her family's wishes, married Tom and added money into the equation. Her second cousin, Nick Caraway, who graduated from an Ivy League College and was aspiring to become rich in a respectable manner himself, witnesses the rounds of fights between these three characters.

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He is finding out firsthand what happens when humans seeking happiness at all costs, become blinded by their own passions and fall pray to their limitations.

Jay Gatsby, is puling strings and conducting dubious business involving the prohibited selling and consumption of alcohol, throwing lavish parties every week-end. The law itself was unethical since its only qualities were to encourage and create endless opportunities for all sorts of people, more or less respectable, to become rich criminals. Gatsby throws insane amounts of money on his weekend parties for two reasons: get bribe officials in high positions and to get attention. Presented through Nick Caraway's eyes, his determination, his will do start from the dust of the poorest neighborhoods and build an empire just for the sake of love, seem to be the characteristics that allowed the author the right to title this book "Great Gatsby" instead of "Jim Gatsby." The author knows first hand what a human being is capable of when in love. He did not get involved into the risky business of selling alcohol when the law prohibited it, but he did his best to earn money to support his wife crazy ways of spending it.

The laws of business apply in legal as well as in illegal business. It is just that, the illegal business of selling alcohol between 1920 and 1933 in the U.S., created the best conditions for organized crime to thrive and develop at a scale never seen before in that part of the world. The value of the human life was going down in the streets of cities like Chicago or New York, getting close to nothing.

Great Gatsby, like the Buchanans, had his share of living the American Dream. He had forged his own destiny and kept working at it instead of inheriting the right to it. When Myrtle tells Nick the story of her first encounter with Tom, she finds the argument and, at the same time, the reason for her exoneration for starting….....

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https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/legal-illegal-business-ethics-2148798
   

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