Is Money the Issue?

 After reading and analyzing satire: “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, exaggeration is used to illustrate the big-picture idea that is present in most of Fitzgerald’s work (that money is the root of most problems). Personally, I connected this to the media today, and how it works now, more than ever, to promote consumerism through social media. 

 Today in the media, lifestyles and materialistic-status items are shown VERY excessively, almost in an exaggerated way. This is to keep these ideas present in the minds of youth and other impressionable members of society. In a similar way, DBR also describes life in an obviously exaggerated fashion. By doing this, the point of the short story comes across extremely clearly. Coherently, social media advertising shown in dramatic amounts in order for people to become more consumeristic. After people spend time being influenced by these idealistic things, they become obsessed with money in order to purchase such things. 

 

This leads to the idea that money is the root of most problems. Whilst people are comparing themselves on social media, they are becoming more obsessed with the need for money, falsely believing that it will be able to buy themselves happiness and acceptance from the materialistic items advertised on social media. This inevitably leads to a hopeless, endless cycle of never feeling satisfied, and always chasing the things that we don’t have.

 

In relation to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work, the idea of always wanting the things we don’t have ties into the themes present in The Great Gatsby. In the Great Gatsby, Gatsby is constantly chasing the idea of having Daisy, which he likely only wants because she is married to somebody else. He uses his money to try and win her over, and it eventually leads to his murder. This is just one more example of how money causes so many problems in so many lives, both fictional, factual, and right now in our society.