Wall Street Essay Questions

When Bud decides to sabotage Gekko's Bluestar Airline deal, has he genuinely had a crisis of conscience or is he trying to save his father's job? Would he care about the deal if it did not affect his own family?

Bud has not had a true change of heart or a crisis of conscience and it is probable that had his own father not been affected by the deal he would likely have gone along with it in the same way he had the other deals before. In earlier deals and insider trades he had spared no thought for the company employees. In this way, his perceptible change of heart is really more specific to his own experience, even if being put in the position of one of Gordon Gekko's victims exposes his own immorality to himself.

Why do you think Gordon Gekko has resonated with so many people even decades after the release of the film?

Although he was intended to be the film's "villain" and his character was written as a salutary warning against greed and excess, it is Gekko's blatant enjoyment of both of these things that makes him so appealing to generations of audiences. He is comfortable in his behaviors and enjoys the rewards of his hard work, a sort of aspirational figure for those looking to achieve similar wealth and status. Gekko seems to be playing a game, and his carefree amorality and decadent lifestyle is a particularly aspirational American position. He is like a more cold blooded and selfish Jay Gatsby, the archetype of a self-made American man who looks out for himself and only himself.

How is Gordon Gekko a paternal figure for Bud?

Bud has a father with whom he is friendly, but we learn early on in the film that he feels that he has very little in common with him. While Carl is a union leader at a failing airline who says, "Money's one giant pain in the ass y'ask me," Bud is eager to make it big and live a lavish Manhattan lifestyle. Gordon Gekko steps in as a surrogate father figure for Bud. He shares and exceeds Bud's own ambitions for wealth and success, and provides an example of an older man who fought for a giant fortune. While he is working for him, Bud prioritizes his relationship with Gekko over his relationship with his own father, selling out information about his father's airline in order to ascend the ranks. By the end, Bud rejects Gekko as a paternal figure and chooses to be loyal to his real dad.

What do we learn about Gordon Gekko's biography that makes his character more complicated?

After he and Bud play a grueling game of squash, the two of them go to the steam room, where Gekko tells Bud that he is not simply a silver-spoon-fed business school kid who made money off of his inheritance, but rather a City College grad who worked hard and had the grit and determination to make his fortune. In this way, he identifies with Bud, who also doesn't come from a wealthy background. In this moment, perhaps the only time in the film, we see that Gekko is a man who wanted to make something of himself not simply because he was handed over his privilege, but because it was important to him to improve. This does not necessarily redeem him as a character, but it makes his narrative that much more nuanced.

Is the ending a happy one?

The end of the film leaves Bud's narrative on an ambiguous note. While he has recently been arrested for insider trading and humiliatingly led out of his office in handcuffs, he cooperates with the police and hands over a taped conversation with Gordon Gekko to the police. The film ends with his father dropping him off at the courthouse and him walking in to see what his fate will be. We do not learn what fate will befall him, which gives the final scene a bittersweet tone. Bud might go to jail, or his sentence might be eased by the fact that he cooperated with the authorities, and he can go and work for Bluestar Airlines.