# Was F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Gatsby" right about the rich being "different from you or me"?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [July 5, 2016, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170 "2016-07-05T22:46:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2016, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/1 "2016-07-05T22:46:16Z")
There is a famous quote in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “[The Great Gatsby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby)” where the titular character says
> [@](#):
>
> “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we
> are. They are different. ”
I don’t hang with the generational super mega rich. For those dopers that have directly or indirectly is this statement true to a large extent or just literary fluff?
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2016, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/2 "2016-07-06T00:25:59Z")
Hard to say.
From what I can tell, there’s a sharp divide between the wealthy on the West and East coast, in the US. On the East Coast, people like to dress nice, attend cocktail parties, etc. and either are or are hoping to one day become “old money”. On the West Coast, there is no old money, everyone wears denims and a t-shirt (or the female equivalent), and is much more likely to view themselves as a person doing a job, which just happens to be at the top of the hierarchy.
Possibly, with time, the West Coast will become like the East as more families are able to establish legacies. Though, Westerners are also less likely to pass their business on to their children. If that continues, then it will take a while.
But, as with anything, classifying by group isn’t going to map very well to the individual. There’s going to be wide variation between people, how they got wealthy, how long they’ve been wealthy, etc.
Among people who got wealthy themselves, the only real characteristic is that they’re relatively good with money and were willing to put in the hours/headache to get there. Anything else goes. They could be great people or assholes. Some will stick to their roots, others will try to immerse themselves in the realm of the rich and forget there ever was something else.
I think it’s fair to say that the wealthy can and do lose track of what “real” life is like. But by the same token, most people either never experienced or will grow out of what it was like to live on the street, or to live in a war-torn nation. Everyone who is above everyone will look clueless, cliqueish, and insincere to those below them. That’s not really a unique phenomenon to the wealthy. They’re just in the position of having the largest number of other people viewing them in that way.
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2016, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/3 "2016-07-06T01:50:33Z")
Some are misers…and others hold to nobless oblige and donate in large amounts to charity. Some are paranoid, and others are open. Some buy only the best, and others buy cheap.
On the other hand, Fitzgerald was looking at a specific culture, with societal values and norms strongly ingrained, trained from youth, and behaviorally enforced. That specific subculture did stand out from those around it. That group of rich people was, in fact, different.
You see another window on that society in the high society novels of Robert W. Chambers. His rich people are a bit more like the rest of us, but you can still sense a cultural divide.
(Both writers’ characters have problems with alcohol… Prohibition actually made sense…at the time.)
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### Author:  [@TipTapTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TipTapTwo)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2016, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/4 "2016-07-06T02:02:34Z")
You know what? I never realized that Gadsby and The Great Gatsby were different books. I always assumed that Gadsby was the book written without the letter “E,” and the movie ruined itself by retitling itself as _The Great Gatsby_ and having the characters speak in words with e’s in them… Now I know that I have never read Gadsby
Gadsby by Ernest Vincent Wright 1939
> **[Gadsby (novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_%28novel%29)**
>
> Gadsby is a 1939 novel by Ernest Vincent Wright, written without words that contain the letter E, the most common letter in English. A work that deliberately avoids certain letters is known as a lipogram. The plot revolves around the dying fictional city of Branton Hills, which is revitalized as a result of the efforts of protagonist John Gadsby and a youth organizer.
> Though vanity published and little noticed in its time, the book has since become a favorite of fans of constrained writing and i...
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925
> **[The Great Gatsby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby)**
>
> The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan.
> The novel was inspired by a youthful romance Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra King, and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island's North Shore in 1922. Following a move to the ...
I would generalize further and mix **Sage Rat’s** and Gatsby’s ideas into what I think I would feel. If I as a middle class American who works at a skilled job, was suddenly thrust into homelessness and left to live with those who were born in destitution and never left it… I would feel like I was better than them, yes. I at least would know that I had it all, once. I would know that even if I never found work again, I would have still been of more use to society than these eternal parasites around me.
It would be like how it does not really matter how much we make, it just matters that we make more than those around us. To selfishly cling to any little shred that we imagine makes us live better than, or feel superior towards, anybody.
It is like how everyone wants to be rich, and moral, and not hypocritical; but it seems universal that if people cannot feel superior through material wealth, we switch over to trying to feel better through beating them with our “superior” morals and ways of thought.
A poor can find spiritual superiority through a religion that promises that the meek will inherit the earth, or that the rich could no more get into eternal paradise than could he fit through a needle’s eye. A rich can imagine himself an Atlas -keeping the world up and working through his wealth- and just shrug at the stupidity and laziness of the poor.
So yes, I agree with the Gatsby quote, as long as I also remember to agree with its inverse perspective. That of a low class person rising to riches as also “being different” from the born rich such that:
[QUOTE=]
Let me tell you about the very rich [that worked up from nothing]. They are different from you and me [the born rich]. They possess and enjoy [later], and it does something to them, makes them [hard] where we are [soft], and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless your were born [poor], it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are, because we [the born rich never] had to discover the compensations and refuges of live for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world[…], they still think they are better than we are. They are different
[/QUOTE]
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### Author:  [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2016, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/5 "2016-07-06T12:12:15Z")
The rich _are_ different.
They have more money.
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### Author:  [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2016, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/6 "2016-07-06T12:25:22Z")
[The quotation](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:F._Scott_Fitzgerald) is from Fitzgerald’s story “The Rich Boy”
> [@](#):
>
> Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.
> [@](#):
>
> Hemingway is responsible for a famous misquotation of Fitzgerald’s. According to Hemingway, a conversation between him and Fitzgerald went:
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > Fitzgerald: The rich are different than you and me.
> >
> > Hemingway: Yes, they have more money.
>
> This never actually happened; it is a retelling of an actual encounter between Hemingway and Mary Colum, which went as follows:
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > Hemingway: I am getting to know the rich.
> >
> > Colum: I think you’ll find the only difference between the rich and other people is that the rich have more money.
The history of the “quotation” goes on to demonstrate more of Hemingway’s jealous bitchery.
I’ve met a few rich folks–born & raised rich, that is. I was not impressed. Although it is possible to raise a decent rich kid. It just isn’t easy.
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### Author:  [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2016, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/7 "2016-07-06T12:47:22Z")
It depends on the rich people, of course, but it’s clear from context Fitzgerald is talking about people BORN rich.
Typically, they absolutely are. People born rich are usually precisely as Fitzgerald describes them. There are exceptions to the rule, as there always are, people born rich just do not have the same perspective on life as normal people.
There was a recent thread on the “Worst wedding announcement ever” drawn from the NYT’s “Society” pages. If you read stuff like that - and you won’t be able to for long - the unadulterated douchbagginess of the generationally rich is just astounding. It drips from them. People who BECOME rich can get pretty bad, but not necessarily, and most remain reasonably decent human beings.
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### Author:  [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2016, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/8 "2016-07-06T13:10:41Z")
Just as middle-class people can be totally unintentional assholes to poor people by just not understanding that the poor have very different budget fears and needed skills.
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### Author:  [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2016, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/9 "2016-07-06T13:13:17Z")
Quite true. “Rich” is a relative term.
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### Author:  [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2016, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/10 "2016-07-06T14:09:01Z")
I like William Gibson’s take on the subject.
[Quote=Count Zero]
And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.
[/quote]
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### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2016, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/11 "2016-07-06T19:07:40Z")
Of course the super rich are different from you and me. For example, when I go out to my family’s house in the Hamptons, I have to drive 4 hours down the LIE. Rich people have the option of taking a seaplane, helicopter or chartered yacht. At least I don’t have to take the Jitney like a hobo.
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2016, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/12 "2016-07-06T19:29:25Z")
> [@RickJay](#):
>
> Quite true. “Rich” is a relative term.
From the standpoint of your average Indian, your average American is swimming in cash and luxuries.
\
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### Author:  [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2016, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/13 "2016-07-06T21:53:40Z")
> [@msmith537](#):
>
> Of course the super rich are different from you and me. For example, when I go out to my family’s house in the Hamptons, I have to drive 4 hours down the LIE. Rich people have the option of taking a seaplane, helicopter or chartered yacht. At least I don’t have to take the Jitney like a hobo.
Ah, where is the Doper \*\*Rand Rover \*\*when you need him? 😉
Thank you, **Bridget Burke** for setting the record straight on The Rich Boy vs. Gatsby. Fitzgerald’s “Gatsby Cluster” short stories are gathered up in the short story collection _All the Sad Young Men_. His editor Max Perkins gathered up magazine-published stories where Fitzgerald worked on his characters, themes and pacing and put it out the year after the novel; 1926 in this case. I used to have a First edition; one of the coolest 1920’s dust jackets ever: [http://www.royalbooks.com/pictures/medium/119736.jpg](http://www.royalbooks.com/pictures/medium/119736.jpg)
Back to the OP, yeah, he worked on his idea of the Rich being different in The Rich Boy and Winter Dreams. These fed into Gatsby, and anchor the understanding of why brash self-invented Jay Gatz could never sit down for cold chicken and ale with Daisy Buchannan. Well, that and being dead at that point. 😉
And yeah, Hemingway’s appropriation of the remark and apparent bullying of Fitzgerald in general just adds luster to Hem’s misogyny and racism. Sigh.
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### Author:  [@Septima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Septima)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2016, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/14 "2016-07-06T23:32:27Z")
[QUOTE=Wordman]
Back to the OP, yeah, he worked on his idea of the Rich being different in The Rich Boy and Winter Dreams. These fed into Gatsby, and anchor the understanding of why brash self-invented Jay Gatz could never sit down for cold chicken and ale with Daisy Buchannan. Well, that and being dead at that point.
[/QUOTE]
He’s hiding in the bushes at that point. He dies the next morning.
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### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2016, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/15 "2016-07-07T01:39:17Z")
> [@WordMan](#):
>
> Ah, where is the Doper Rand Rover when you need him?
Probably at Galt’s Gulch with all the other “producers” trying to figure out why no one can change the light bulbs or fix the toilets.
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### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2016, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/16 "2016-07-07T01:40:35Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#):
>
> From the standpoint of your average Indian, your average American is swimming in cash and luxuries.
>
> \
And how much does the average American care about the plight of the average Indian?
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2016, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/17 "2016-07-07T04:34:14Z")
> [@msmith537](#):
>
> And how much does the average American care about the plight of the average Indian?
Based on Trump’s following, I’d venture to guess less than your average wealthy American cares about the average American.
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### Author:  [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2016, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/18 "2016-07-07T08:54:37Z")
They are different. But actually, in lots of ways they are more like really poor people than they are like the middle class. There’s a certain sense of not-caring, it’s hard to explain.
For instance the very rich people I have known have been much more inclined to let their children basically run wild. The middle-class people are hovering because god forbid even the most minuscule harm come to their offspring. The upper and lower classes are all “Hey, they need to learn how to be tough.” And the rich people I know are very tough, particularly the women.
Meanwhile, the poor people I’ve known have also been perfectly willing to let their kids run wild, also because “they need to learn how to be tough” (partly) and partly because they are struggling to earn a living, or in jail, or something, so not there. And they are tough, too.
Middle class people? Soft. A generalization, of course.
So yeah, rich parents will let their kids do three-day eventing and poor parents will let their kids use Uncle Fred’s chain saw, so there are differences.
ETA: I would not let my kids do three-day eventing. I wouldn’t even let them do gymnastics. I’m so middle class.
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### Author:  [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2016, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/19 "2016-07-07T10:44:49Z")
> [@Septima](#):
>
> He’s hiding in the bushes at that point. He dies the next morning.
Of course. Even better.
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### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2016, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-gatsby-right-about-the-rich-being-different-from-you-or-me/759170/20 "2016-07-07T10:54:49Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#):
>
> They are different. But actually, in lots of ways they are more like really poor people than they are like the middle class. There’s a certain sense of not-caring, it’s hard to explain.
>
> For instance the very rich people I have known have been much more inclined to let their children basically run wild. The middle-class people are hovering because god forbid even the most minuscule harm come to their offspring. The upper and lower classes are all “Hey, they need to learn how to be tough.” And the rich people I know are very tough, particularly the women.
I’ve long thought that there is a bell curve where if you are very rich or very poor, you have the luxury of not giving a shit or being a total fuckup. Those in the middle have to follow the rules in order to stay there.
But what you describe of rich people, I would not characterize as “tough”. I would characterize it as a depraved indifference and false arrogance that comes from entitlement and being insulated from any consequences. Rich people can let their children “run wild” because they know no one in their circles will harm them. Half the time, they have servants taking care of them anyway. If they damage anything, the parents can just write a check. Rich kids don’t need to worry about getting kicked out of prep school for fighting, drugs or cheating because their rich parents can just network them into another one.
When you say “rich women are tough”, I think of the women from the various Real Housewives show. They aren’t “tough”. They are spoiled, obnoxious, demanding, angry brats, fueled by alcohol and drugs.
Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of people who become rich because they are smart and tough. But there are plenty of rich people who act tough (like Trump for example) because all they know is bullying servants and employees around. What has Trump done that would make him an actual “tough” guy"?
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