F. Scott Fitzgerald creates an an over-the-top description in his book The Great Gatsby of the Roaring Twenties a time of jazz, flappers, decadence, and excess. But beneath the sparkle of parties and champagne is something more sinister. Jay Gatsby, a self-made wealthy man constructed out of bootlegging, whose rise to wealth is inexorably linked to crime and gangsterism. Even though Gatsby is traditionally interpreted as a romantic idealist seeking love, his criminal business methods expose the corruption beneath the American Dream. Gatsby’s shady fortunes are put into doubt at the beginning of the book. How did a man who started life in poverty make so many fortunes in five short years? The answer is gradually revealed, Gatsby has a business partner named Meyer Wolfsheim, notorious underworld kingpin most famous for the 1919 World Series scandal. In this partnership, Gatsby becomes involved in bootlegging during Prohibition, when liquor was forbidden but highly profitable to sell. Gatsby’s parties, replete with complimentary drinks, which cost something in crime but no one asks. This association of Gatsby with bootlegging is symptomatic of a more extensive moral corruption. The higher class, such as Tom and Daisy Buchanan, is corrupt to its core but better shielded. Tom is dishonest, a cheater, and a judge who holds onto his old money superior complex. Daisy, on her part, wants comfort rather than love and avoids responsibility. Even the narrator, Nick, claims to hold judgment in abeyance and yet gets caught up in the glamour. Fitzgerald uses these characters to show a society where ethics are flexible, and how appearances indeed take precedence over integrity. Gatsby’s own sinful exploits blend the lines between sin and success. He’s envied for his wealth but quietly shunned as soon as the facts are revealed. Such lines are proof of the pace at which America, in the 1920s, was able to blind itself to morality as long as it was stained. The American Dream, once speaking of diligence and opportunity, had become a hollow pursuit of status and excess, often spurred by corruption. Gatsby’s association with bootleggers is not merely a literary conceit it’s a metaphor for how far society had sunk. He gets his dream not through honesty but through dishonesty. And even that doesn’t work. In fact, it kills him. Fitzgerald’s point is clear, if success is founded on corruption, no amount of glamour can conceal the rot. The Great Gatsby is not merely the story of the rise and fall of one individual but a criticism of a society drunk on wealth, blind to its own decay. Gatsby may throw the parties, but America is dancing as the floor collapses.