DIEmond

     Once upon a time, the Washington family drowned in wealth and resided deep in the isolated mountains far away from society (with the exception of their slaves and prisoners). While everyone in the world should have been attempting to create a life full of happiness for themselves, people were obsessed with money and attempted to do anything to attain it. The Washington family was lucky and possessed a diamond as big as a mountain that was of enormous wealth. Their own affluence imprisoned them by trapping them from conversing with the outside world in order to keep their wealth a secret. Suffering from a lack of outside influence, the Washington’s invite friends to entertain them: only to murder them in the end. After the Washington daughter Kismine accidentally reveals her family’s secret with stuttering rhetoric to the guest John, the depth of their corruption is uncovered. Their riches are ironic because although they have so much of it, they cannot do anything with it; if they tried to spend it, then “not only would the bottom fall out of the mark, but also, if the value should vary with its size…there would not be enough gold in the world to buy a tenth part of it” (87). The money leads to their destructive ending; it literally kills them as the diamond mountain “changed suddenly to a dazzling burning yellow” (111) and blows up everything in its path. Kismine’s family’s corruption has rubbed off on her because her ignorance towards the value of a diamond is as ridiculous as a pink elephant when she confesses that she is “a little tired of diamonds” (112). Just as Moses was obedient to God, the Washington family was obedient to the very money that leads to their death. Although Fitzgerald’s satires took place in the 1900’s, the very human flaws in his stories still exist today.