What do Diamonds represent in Literature?

 After reading another of Fitzgerald's works, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, I started thinking about how diamonds are portrayed in literature. It intrigued me because I had a very different perspective of what diamonds were after reading the book compared to when I read or watch other forms of storytelling. 

Diamonds are usually considered to be flawless and the most prized valuable by most people, only rivaled in significance by gold. However, diamonds are portrayed differently in different pieces, which makes sense, but is also strange given when we think of diamonds we think perfection. In King Solomon's Mines written by H Rider Haggard, the heroes of the story manage to escape a cave and retreat with diamonds, and live lives of wealth and luxury after the climax of the story ends. Infinite wealth is a standard interpretation of diamonds, but there are ways to make this interpretation bad. In The Diamond of Kali by O. Henry, a general who recounts his epic tale of recovering a diamond from an Indian tribe is found out to be fake. Diamonds in this sense represent fraud and being fake because it is infinite wealth that we show off and brag about. In DBR by Fitzgerald, Braddock Washington shoots down planes and commits crime so that the secret of the huge diamond doesn't get leaked, showing the corruptive side of diamonds and how people go to such lengths to protect their wealth. Finally, The Diamond of Jeru, written by Louis L'Amour, is about a bandit luring in people with his diamonds and wealth to kill them and take their belongings, showing the deceptive side of diamonds, with our greed coming back to bite us because we hold diamonds with such high regards.

Source for all of the examples: https://www.speculatorsjourney.com/diamonds-in-english-literature-twentieth-century-novels-and-short-stories/

So what did we learn? Diamonds still have the qualities of being perfect, enticing, and capable of producing all the wealth in the world, but in the right context, can have a bad connotation in stories because of the people in possession of these diamonds. Diamonds don't have flaws, but people have many, which is a theme found throughout non-diamond literature as well. People are usually the root of their own demise or their corruption, and this idea in literature can teach great lessons about ourselves.