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Greed

Greed
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s’ “A Diamond as Big as the Ritz” and Oliver Stone’s film “Wall Street”, similar themes are repeated by main characters depicted in these works. The characterization of Braddock Washington, and Gordon Gekko reflect how greed, materialism, and corruption lead to their eventual downfall. The only difference between these two characters is that Gordon Gekko does not lose his physical life as a consequence to his greed.
In “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz”, Braddock Washington’s family rises to extraordinary unprecedented wealth after Fitz-Norman Washington, leads him to his family’s fortune when a squirrel presents him with a one hundred thousand dollar diamond. He immediately betrays his team of black men by telling them that he has accidentally found a mine full of rhinestones. His intention was to “take out land in their names and start a sheep and cattle ranch” (Fitzgerald 193). Not wanting to share in his discovery, Washington found himself in a strange dilemma; he knew chaos could erupt if the truth of the size and location of the diamond mountain became known: “His one care must be the protection of his secret, lest in the possible panic, attendant on its discovery he should be reduced with all of the property-holders in the world to utter poverty” (Fitzgerald 194-195). If his secret were found out, absolute chaos would erupt causing irreversible consequences. Fitz-Norman Washington through corruption deceives even the state of Montana by evading surveys.
After the death of Fitz-Norman Washington, Braddock Washington converted diamonds to radium and placed them in containers no larger than a cigar box and deposited them in safety vaults in banks all over the world. He kept a notebook of the names of the banks and the aliases he placed the accounts under. Once he believed that his family had enough to live on for many generations, he sealed up the mine. He was not about to run the risk of his mountain being discovered....