My Favorite passage from The Great Gatsby

Note: The following post uses the author's opinions.

The following passage is from page 88 of The Great Gatsby:

"I walked out the back way-just as Gatsby had when he had made his nervous circuit of the house half an hour before-and ran for a huge black knotted tree, whose massed leaves made a fabric against the rain.  Once more it was pouring, and my irregular lawn, well-shaved by Gatsby's gardener, abounded in small muddy swamps and prehistoric marshes.  There was nothing to look at from under the tree except Gatsby's enormous house, so I stared at it, like Kant at his church steeple, for half an hour.  A brewer had built it early in the "period" craze a decade before, and there was a story that he'd agreed to pay five years' taxes on all the neighboring cottages if the owners would have their roofs thatched with straw.  Perhaps their refusal took the heart out of his plan to Found a Family-he went into an immediate decline.  His children sold his house with the black wreath still on the door.  Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry." (Fitzgerald 88)

 Nick is obviously thinking about how Gatsby's house was built in the 1910s (since he mentioned "a decade before").  What I want to point out though is that the house was built by a "brewer" rather than anyone else.  At first, I thought the brewer was a cook who just made soup to sell to his neighbors.  I later realized that the brewer could have actually created alcoholic drinks because "he went into an immediate decline".  This "decline" could have probably resulted from the 18th Amendment which started Prohibition.  It could also be inferred that the brewer was wealthy because he wanted "all the neighboring cottages...have their roofs thatched with straw."  Although the brewer "agreed to pay five years' taxes" for his neighbors, the "straw" is a symbol of poverty for the neighbors and how the brewer is richer, explaining why they refused the brewer's offer.  There is also noticeable similarities between Gatsby and the brewer because they are both wealthy and made money from alcohol.  The similarities perhaps reveal how Gatsby's mindset is stuck in the past.  (Just to clarify, the brewer is not the same person as Gatsby because the brewer had children while Gatsby didn't).  Nick had actually compared himself to "Kant" (a famous philosopher from the Enlightenment) because he makes a generalization of "Americans" at the end of the passage.  This generalization could be referring to Tom and Daisy, who planed to stay at East Egg like "serfs", but moved out at the end of the book as "peasantry."  (In case you didn't know, the difference between peasants and serfs is that peasants are allowed to move away from their land while serfs are forced by their lords to stay on their land.  Also, I am not saying that Tom and Daisy are poor because I referred to them as peasants, they are obviously wealthy.)