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Parth Shah

Holly Dugan

English: Literature and Financial Imagination

Monday/Wednesday 12:45

The Wolf That Has Something to Teach

Reading the “Wolf of Wall street” is nothing short of a Six-flags Roller-Coaster Ride

as one experiences a medley of emotions while reading the story that wallets almost every

bawdy material imaginable. From a man snorting cocaine out of a vial in a hooker's anus to a

man miming anal sex with a client he is swindling over the phone to multiple people throwing

midgets at dart boards and just about everything in-between. One guffaws, survives the

disgust, and relishes the hell as he is swung from a theme of sordid debauchery to brilliantly

written dark-humor. There are many instances in the book that deliver value from the

egotistical characters who revel in vanity and bathe in luxury. But after intricately looking into

every twisted character and personality in the story, one can actually discover key values and

lessons beneath the corruption the masks the aforesaid. Value has many off-shoots and this

review claims that one can actually take away a good lesson from the book and claim that

there is brevity in a path that is vile and immoral. Belfort wants his readers to know of his

mistakes and make them stepping stones and cautions on the path for success.

Belfort opens his chronicle with a tale of how within six years, he rose from an entry

level apprentice at a brokerage house to the founder of his own investment firm. One does not

get to read much about his growth and ascent which is quite a disappointment to ladder

climbers but the memoir is so entertaining and full of controversy that it is surely a page

turner. In the 1990s Jordan Belfort, former superstar of the infamous investment firm Stratton

Oakmont, became one of the most scandalous names in American finance: a brilliant, devious

stock-chopper who led his merry mob on a wild ride out of the gorges of Wall Street and into a
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massive office on Long Island. Stratton Oakmont successfully turned microcap investing into

a wickedly lucrative game as Belfort’s hyped-up, coked-out brokers badgered clients into

stock buys that were guaranteed to earn obscene profits for the firm. But an insatiable appetite

for debauchery, dubious tactics, and a fateful partnership with a breakout shoe designer named

Steve Madden would land Belfort on both sides of the law and into a traumatic darkness all his

own.

From the turbulent relationship Belfort shared with his trophy wife as they ran a

whacky household that comprised two young children, a full-time staff of twenty-two, a pair

of bodyguards, and hidden cameras everywhere, here is the inexplicable story of a regular guy

who went from bundling Italian ices at sixteen to making millions until it all came crashing

down. But the sole reason this book should be on your “keys to life” shelf is because the value

of instruction, purpose and competitive intelligence is propounded by the book. Belfort was

able to transform immature individuals into charismatic stock brokers because he had an

inherent sense of pedagogy and was able to communicate by giving simple instructions in a

way that even rookies could assimilate. Belfort amplified the importance and value of

simplicity and informal communication through his unconventional methods of teaching

hopeless Strattonites. The book very intricately discusses the value embedded in the past and

how looking back can never prove damaging. His character subtly implores the readers to look

back and learn. He wants us to question our past as well the past of great men before us and

analyze the ramifications that followed.

The biography is inspiring as it fuels passions and topics that are shared by people

from all walks of life. Belfort openly talks about the value of greed and power. Unlike the

negative connotations we give to the aforementioned, Jordan wields them to fuel people’s

potential. Chosen few of the hardest working employees of Stratton Oakmont were

encouraged and allowed to branch out and start their own brokerage firms under Belfort’s
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guidance. A very magnanimous and uplifting Belfort is exposed as we flip pages of the book.

Belfort said, “It was what every Strattonite dreamed of and something I touched upon in all

my meetings—that if you continued to work hard and stay loyal, one day I’d tap you on the

shoulder and set you up in business. And then you would get truly rich.” (Belfort 142) The

memoir demonstrates the importance of success through reliance and dependence. Belfort

was of the opinion that people are respected when they are needed and ergo he managed to

create a worker regiment that needed his guidance and the company to stay rich and make

ends meet. He wittily encouraged the brokers to work hard as well as spend profligately and

live beyond their means--“I want you to deal with all your problems by becoming rich! I

want you to attack your problems head-on! I want you to go out and start spending money

right now. I want you to leverage yourself. I want you to back yourself into a corner. Give

yourself no choice but to succeed. Let the consequences of failure become so dire and so

unthinkable that you’ll have no choice but to do whatever it takes to succeed.” (Belfort 126)

Although the book is tough to take, its main purpose is to make the readers aware of

the probable snags in life and how nothing is sure to stay. It is an outstanding achievement

that Belfort, in his book portrays himself as both sharp and conniving, even more so than

DeVito in ‘Goodfellas.” However, after assimilating all the robust lessons and trainings, the

reader is not too sure of Belfort’s central state beyond the “regret” that he has to put up in

order to continue to make his millions. He is quite a bundle of vigor and impulse. He is a

brute, a real wolf in sheep’s clothing.

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Works Cited

Belfort, Jordan. The Wolf of Wall Street. bantam books trade paperback ed. New York:

Bantam Books Trade Paperbacks, 2013.