How are the characters from at least two literary works representational of people from the time and place in which they were written?

(for the sake of this example, I will focus on one text - The Great Gatsby) Characters are moulded to embody the context of the novel in terms of ideals, standards and norms, creating vehicles for providing cultural insight, as exemplified in the novel 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald. One of the key protagonists, Gatsby, is characterised to be a living representation of the post World War 1 United States, encapsulating the infamous 'roaring '20s' era in his extravagance and blind chasing of the 'American Dream'. His lack of connection from present reality and out-of-touch lifestyle ironically paints Gatsby as the epitome of a man of his time; with an insatiable appetite for more in a society hierarchically organised by materialism, his ambitious nature is what eventually consumes him, as it did America as a whole in the Great Depression of 1929, merely 4 years after the book's publishing. Fitzgerald guides the reader through the life of Gatsby to portray the materialism of the 1920's as an infection that even the best succumbed to, and the corruption in blurring the line between dreams and reality in a self-indoctrinated society. The narrator's bias in demanding he was an exception from the crowd of empty personalities only serves to highlight that Gatsby slowly lost himself to a past he could not recreate and a present he would never come to accept. Gatsby's life in ways acts as a metaphorical representation of the roaring '20's; immoderate and paved by delusion.