The Great Gatsby and the Valley of Ashes Many times we hear about the effect of society on people; societies that influence how people think and act. The opposite is hardly mentioned: people's actions and lifestyles influence society as a whole and the way it is characterized. Therefore, society is a reflection of its inhabitants and in The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, it is a wasteland described as the "valley of ashes". Since the characters in this novel make up this wasteland, aren't they the waste? Symbolically, these wastes represent the lack of ethics of 1920s society and the decadence of civilization. In The Great Gatsby, moral shortcomings such as godlessness, selfishness, and idleness reflect a society condemned as "the valley of ashes." as" and deprived of God. The "valley of ashes" symbolizes a society that has forgotten the importance of God, who takes a backseat to profane desires. A lack of seriousness towards God is evident in this corrupt society when Gatsby uses God's name in a lie, declaring "I'll tell you God's truth." His right hand suddenly commands divine punishment to stand by. "I'm the son of some rich people from the Middle West, all dead now." (65) During the Puritan era this would have been considered blasphemous in contrast to the moral standards of the society of the 1920s. Latin Deus Absconditus, equivalent to "God is gone". Although the "valley of ashes" is similar to a hell and without a solid foundation of God, people still cling to the idea that there is a god... . half of paper...ald." Critical Essays on the "Great Gatsby" by Scott Fitzgerald, Ed. Scott Donaldson, Boston, 1984. 13-20. Teacher comments: Your thesis is clear and you stick to it throughout your paper, bringing all your ideas together and encapsulating them. When quoting, the final punctuation should come after the parentheses instead of inside the quotation marks. When you quote someone's speech it is not necessary to use both quotation marks and comma at the beginning or end of the quotation, the extra comma is not necessary. The comma is only used to separate speech from someone else's speech or text if you are interested in the "valley of ashes" and wasteland theme of the early 1900s I would suggest reading the poems of T. S. Eliot, "J. Alfred Prufrock" and the Waste Land.