What do you think of the obsession with money and the consumer culture of the 1920s dominates human thinking and behaviour in The Great Gatsby?I'm...

In The Great Gatsby, Nick goes back
to the Midwest because he wants no part of the consumer culture of the East.  He sees
the hypocrisy, carelessness, and cruelty of the uber-competitive socio-economic
structure and refuses to be participate.

Most importantly,
Nick sees the destructive power that materialism has on relationships.  Men treat women
as objects.  Women treat each other as objects.  And poor men kill rich men because of
jealousy over cars and houses as much as women.

All the
women in the novel are flat, static, stock characters: temptresses.  They cheat at golf.
 They become mistresses.  They are terrible mothers.  They call their daughters
"hopeless little fools."  They cry over shirts.  They get slapped for yelling another
woman's name.  In short, they are meant to be consumed, run over, pushed aside, and
silenced by violence.  Why?  They are status symbols only, like the cars men
drive.