Tom is magnitudes of order wealthier than Gatsby. Note, in the initial party scene we discover that Gatsby's library is full of “blank” books: nice spines no substance (metaphor anyone). Gatsby does have…. shirts—so many shirts.
Tom and Gatsby are both men in their early thirties, who are wealthy, but Tom comes from old money and Gatsby is a part of the nouveau riche. Due to their difference in social class, they present themselves differently.
Nick describes how the extent of his wealth rather took your breath away . It has been entirely inherited – he doesn't work for a living and presumably never has. The description of him as Tom Buchanan of Chicago suggests his high status and sense of entitlement.
We are told that Gatsby came up from essentially nothing, and that the first time he met Daisy Buchanan, he was “a penniless young man.” His fortune, we are told, was the result of a bootlegging business – he “bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago” and sold illegal alcohol over the counter.
Kevin Roose, for New York Magazine, calculates that with the low profit margin nature of the bootlegging business. If Gatsby had kept all his assets in cash he would have been worth only $1.25 million in 1922 — the year the book takes place.
Gatsby got rich as a bootlegger by selling alcohol to drug stores after Congress passed the Volstead Act, declaring most alcohol illegal to possess or consume. The Volstead Act went into effect in 1920, so Gatsby most likely had his distribution system set up within a year or two.
In his novel, money is divided into two types: new money and old money. New money is the fortune that self-made characters like Gatsby have. Old money encompasses the inherited money owned by Daisy and Tom.
On their way out, Tom speculates that Gatsby's wealth comes from bootlegging, and Nick denies it. Daisy then remarks that Gatsby made his money by building an empire of drug stores.
Tom is also deeply invested in maintaining the social order. He feels threatened by the idea of the lower classes encroaching on his privileged life. He objects to Gatsby not only because Gatsby is in love with Daisy, but also because Gatsby comes from a poor background.
From that day on, James Gatz, the poor farm boy from the Midwest, ceased to exist. Jay Gatsby was sophisticated and born into a wealthy family who had all since passed away, leaving him their fortunes. The moment he stepped onto Dan Cody's yacht, he was a rich man, regardless of the current state of his finances.
Biography. Daisy Fay was born in 1899 to a wealthy family in Louisville, Kentucky. Like many women of the time, she married for money, particularly to Tom Buchanan.
The character is a wealthy socialite from Louisville, Kentucky who resides in the fashionable town of East Egg on Long Island during the Jazz Age. She is narrator Nick Carraway's second cousin, once removed, and the wife of polo player Tom Buchanan, with whom she has a daughter.
Inevitably, she met a person who was as 'artificial' as her. But Tom was able to provide Daisy with everything she wished. She wanted more money, she wanted the presence of a man beside her, and she wanted all that instantly. With Gatsby missing, Daisy was quick to find a new man in her life and married him at once.
Nick is particularly taken with Gatsby and considers him a great figure. He sees both the extraordinary quality of hope that Gatsby possesses and his idealistic dream of loving Daisy in a perfect world.
Eventually, Gatsby won Daisy's heart, and they made love before Gatsby left to fight in the war. Daisy promised to wait for Gatsby, but in 1919 she chose instead to marry Tom Buchanan, a young man from a solid, aristocratic family who could promise her a wealthy lifestyle and who had the support of her parents.
Furthermore, both Daisy and Jordan are also at the mercy of their families: Daisy derives all of her wealth and power from Tom, while Jordan is beholden to an old wealthy aunt who controls her money. They don't actually have control over their own money, and therefore their choices.
The title character of The Great Gatsby is a young man, around thirty years old, who rose from an impoverished childhood in rural North Dakota to become fabulously wealthy.
Nick was not a poor man, but definitely was not considered wealthy either. He hoped to become an expert at selling bonds and wanted to become a wealthy man. This shows that he started from the bottom and is working hard to push himself to the top. Nick is also a very honest man, unlike many in the story.…
In the course of the novel, and no doubt the new film version, we find out what Gatsby is hiding: not only his criminal bootlegging, but also his family name, Gatz, and his poor, ethnic-American roots, which in the end exclude him from the upper-class Anglo-American social circles he hoped to enter.
While it's clear that Gatsby achieves wealth, he is by no means considered successful as he ends up losing all his wealth due to his corrupt means of acquiring money, while simultaneously losing the love of his life, Daisy.
The character is an enigmatic nouveau riche millionaire who lives in a luxurious mansion on Long Island where he often hosts extravagant parties and who allegedly gained his fortune by illicit bootlegging during prohibition in the United States.
It seems most likely that, being his only living relative, Gatsby's father would inherit his fortune. That said, there is nothing explicitly stated in the book to prove this.
