Wealth's Corruption

Wealth and corruption seem to go hand in hand in The Great Gatsby and The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.  Money is often paired with happiness . The more money someone has, he/she is generally happier.  Another way of thinking is that money can easily solve all problems.  While all these may be true, money also causes blindness towards reality, making one think that with money, anything is possible.

Gatsby has so much money that he has no use for it.  Yet what's ironic is that he spends his time looking across the bay at another house from his beautiful mansion.  Because he has so much money, he thinks that he is able to reunite with Daisy and bring back the past.  But the reality is that he can't. Wealth's power only goes so high, and fixing the past isn't something wealth can do. Reading about Gatsby also gives the impression that he didn't live for much.  Sure he lived lavishly, but what his purpose in life and what were his accomplishments? He never got the girl, and he died at a young age. All those years of finding and waiting for Daisy goes to waste after one simple misunderstanding.

Similarly, Braddock Washington is insanely wealthy, but what does his wealth mean?  His only purpose in life is to guard the family secret, which means that he can never leave the chateau.  He becomes so consumed with his wealth that he will do what ever it takes to protect it, even if it means killing anyone who knows of it.  This greed causes him to blow up the mountain of diamond.  He
destroys all his wealth and everything he lived for just to make sure that no one else can have it.
He lived luxuriously, but without meaning.