Theme of the Great Gatsby Obsessions can ruin a person, everyone has obsessions that are not necessarily normal. Throughout the novel, The Great Gatsby, the main characters Gatsby, Tom, Daisy and Jordan all have some kind of obsession that is significant to their lives and shapes them. What are their obsessions and do they actually ruin them? The main characters in the book have obsessions that will lead to misunderstanding and destruction for them. Gatsby has always thought as himself as being married to Daisy those long 5 years even though she had forgotten about him and was married to someone else. He was obsessed with the idea of her and him together and the life they could have had, she is a like a sweet smelling poison that he drank and it destroyed him. Daisy was in love with Gatsby when they were younger but now she …show more content…
When Tom realizes that he is losing his hold on his wife and his mistress might be leaving to go West it really freaks him out and makes him sweat a little. He wants to always be in control and never have any weaknesses. When he is not in control he does bad things and makes mistakes, that’s why he is obsessed with being in control, he wants noone to think they can undermine him or be better than him. Jordan on the other hand is obsessed with knowing everyone's secrets so that she does not think about her own, even when they are not her secrets to tell. An example of this is, she told Nick about Tom having a mistress in Daisy’s house while Tom and Daisy were in the other room arguing about it. Her career would be over if someone found out her secret was true, she likes hearing the truth about everyone else’s life but does not want anyone else to know she cheated at a golf tournament. She does not have to think about her own secret if she is thinking about everyone else’s secrets she knows, it makes her feel
What will the obsessions in your life lead you to make careless decisions? Throughout the book many characters develop obsessions that affect their life. These obsessions are inadequate because they give the characters a false sense of what happiness is and makes them very relentless when trying to acquire these obsessions. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald has many characters obsessed with money, partying, drinking, and cars.
When reading The Great Gatsby, a book by F. Scott Fitzgerald, something is lacking through all the relationships within the book. What is lacking is the passion and the loyalty that most people have whenever they dedicate themselves to their relationship. There are multiple relationships, but only Tom is married to Daisy, the rest are scandals going on. They both are in a relationship where they both are cheating on each other with other people. Tom is in a relationship with a girl named Myrtle, who is already married to Wilson, and Daisy is in a relationship with Gatsby, someone who had a crush on her for years. These relationships represents the society in the 1920s in what it was like trying to live in that time period. As a result, Fitzgerald mocks the idea of love within the 1920s and calls out how people throughout the book only wished for a social ranking, wealth, and materialistic goods and shows how much of an unhealthy relationship most of the characters have.
First, Tom and Daisy demonstrate their carelessness through their insensitiveness. When Tom is visiting his mistress, Myrtle, she taunts Tom by repeatedly saying “Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!” (Fitzgerald, 39). This causes Tom to get aggravated and strike Myrtle in the face, breaking her nose. Tom physically abuses Myrtle and while he is under the influence of alcohol, he has the intent of hurting her, not caring if she gets injured. Tom also lies to Myrtle, telling her that he would marry her if is wife wasn’t Catholic. Tom does not care about the feelings of his mistress, seeing her as an object and not a human. Myrtle is nothing more than a way for Tom to feel powerful due to her low social status and insecurities. It is mentioned that Tom has cheated on Daisy before with a maid, further proving that Toms motive for having an affair is power. It also proves that Tom is not cheating on Daisy because he is bored, but because he does not truly love her or care for her. Tom’s lack of concern for those around him proves his insensitiveness and overall carelessness.
“In his blue gardens men and women came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars” (Fitzgerald 39). In his character, his relationships, and his gatherings, Jay Gatsby epitomized the illusion of a perfect romance. When Gatsby and Daisy met in 1917, he was searching for money, but ended up profoundly falling in love with her. “[H]e set out for gold and stumbled upon a dream” (Ornstein 37). Only a few weeks after meeting one another, Gatsby had to leave for war, which led to a separation between the two for nearly five years. As “war-torn lovers” Gatsby and Daisy reach the quintessential ideal of archetypical romance. When Gatsby returned from the war, his goal was to rekindle the relationship he once had with Daisy. In order to do this, he believed he would have to work hard to gain new wealth and a new persona. “Jay Gatsby loses his life even though he makes his millions because they are not the kind of safe, respectable money that echoes in Daisy’s lovely voice” (Ornstein 36). Gatsby then meets Daisy’s cousin, Nick Carraway, who helps to reunite the pair. Finally being brought together after years of separation, Gatsby stops throwing the extravagant parties at his home, and “to preserve [Daisy’s] reputation, [he] empties his mansion of lights and servants” (Ornstein 37). Subsequent to their reconciliation, Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband, begins to reveal sordid information about Gatsby’s career which causes Daisy to
All in all, as presented through this work, Gatsby was indeed in love with Daisy for the most part, in the beginning of their relationship, but it all change when Gatsby lost Daisy and so he let himself believed that his past was the one to blame for this circumstances. It is after this, that Gatsby became rather obsessed with the idea of Daisy and having a lovely future with her, because having her meant having it all: stability, confidence, love, happiness and so on. Also, it meant that he had succeeded in life as a whole. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . And then one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” (Chapter 9) All his life, Gatsby intended to escape
In The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, we get to know a set of characters living in the fictional city of West Egg on prosperity Long Island in the summer of 1922. The biggest part of the story is about the wealthy, young, and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby who has a big passion and obsession for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. In this analysis the love triangle between Jay Gatsby, Daisy and Tom Buchanan will be the main focus.
One major relationship in this novel is between Tom and Daisy. Even though they are married, they do not have the best relationship. Daisy was in love with Gatsby five years ago, but while he was away she met Tom and got married. She is shallow and
The biggest plot point of the book can be condensed to Gatsby’s desire to regain Daisy’s love. This can be related to the
Gatsby’s inability to repeat the past is the failure of his greatness, because for him the love for Daisy is the core of his power. Here is decimated his American Dream which for him means two things: wealth and Daisy. This conflict affects the plot by showing the progression that Gatsby has made since the beginning of the book. Another internal conflict
Gatsby dedicates his entire life to Daisy. Without hesitation he devotes his own self towards her. When Gatsby realizes Daisy wanted money he immediately made as much as he could and flaunted his wealth to attract her attention. All of his actions are executed specifically for Daisy, and after all of that dedication Gatsby expects for Daisy to recuperate this unyielding love. The issue is that Daisy is married, she is not the perfect person Gatsby has imagined her to be, she has faults and over the years she’s changed. Gatsby is baffled at Daisy’s inability to “understand,” he wants her to be the same girl she was five years ago, and cannot comprehend that Daisy has changed (109). Nick persuades Gatsby “not to ask too much of her,” Gatsby disregards this claiming that she can always become who she once was (110). Gatsby choses to ignore the real world for the romantic fantasy he has of Daisy and in the end this drives her away. This internal conflict drives Gatsby throughout his life, and after five years of devotion towards Daisy he creates an unrealistic, romantic world he expects Daisy to fit in. The issue is that she is no longer the girl she once was, and now Gatsby must learn how to battle the internal conflict between his dream of Daisy and her
There is a fine line between love and lust. If love is only a will to possess, it is not love. To love someone is to hold them dear to one's heart. In The Great Gatsby, the characters, Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan are said to be in love, but in reality, this seems to be a misconception. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald portrays the themes of love, lust and obsession, through the character of Jay Gatsby, who confuses lust and obsession with love. By the end of the novel however, Jay Gatsby is denied his "love" and suffers an untimely death. The author interconnects the relationships of the various prominent characters to support these ideas.
Throughout the novel The Great Gatsby the author F. Scott Fitzgerald has created dysfunctional relationships between characters to provoke the audience to react is a specific way. Today we will be taking a detailed look at the relationship between the characters Daisy and Tom and demonstrate how the author has created a dysfunctional relationship between the pair as they fail to meet basic requirements of a healthy marriage of love and loyalty.
Gatsby replies that Daisy loves him and had never loved Tom to which Tom hastily objects. They begin arguing about who Daisy truly loves and whether she has ever loved Tom. In return he accused Gatsby of bootlegging and other criminal activities. At this point Daisy starts siding with Tom and Gatsby realises that he has been defeated. Gatsby had tried to lay out and create the perfect future but Tom had controlled the past by bringing back intimate memories. This is a very significant part of the book as this is when Gatsby’s dream, which parallels with the American dream shatters. Everything that he had worked for, the dream he had bound himself to was destroyed in that moment and that was what broke Gatsby and made him not so ‘great’ any more. “…Only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.”
The book Great Gatsby is about love and how society worked in the roaring 20s. In the book Nick Carraway (narrator) who moved from Minnesota to New York to work as a bond salesmen. He talks about how he helped his neighbor named Jay Gatsby get his love Daisy back. Gatsby is a man who has a mysterious past, and secretive side that no one knows about. Jay Gatsby used to be called Jay Gatz before he met his mentor Dan Cody, a wealth man who took a poor farm boy under his wing. Cody took Gatz on a trip around the continent to learn, and by the time of Cody’s death Gatz had become man and changed his name to Jay Gatsby. After Cody passed away Gatsby was the person who will get Cody’s wealth. With his new wealth Gatsby bought a house in West Egg right across for the lake where Daisy his lost love leaved. When Gatsby found that Nick and Daisy were related, Gatsby asked Nick if he could help him get Daisy back. Throughout the summer Nick and Gatsby became really good friends. After a big dispute between Myrtle and her husband about her having a secret affair (Daisy’s husband), Myrtle decided to leave, but Wilson wouldn’t allow it. One night Tom decides to invite Gatsby and Nick to dinner in the city, where Daisy and Tom get in a big fight. After the fight Daisy leaves in anger and Gatsby goes with her to calm her down, but while Daisy was driving she did not see Myrtle on the road and the car hit Myrtle where she died. After Wilson found out that Myrtle was died he was so infuriated
Gatsby is a story of love, betrayal, power, wealth and much more. The novel told by Nick Carraway, tells the story of Jay Gatsby, trying to win over the love of his life, Daisy Buchanan. He has many struggles along the way. Gatsby throws very elaborate parties to try to entice Daisy into going to the parties. With the help of Nick, his neighbor and friend, he continues to try and win Daisy back. Gatsby is trying to live the luxury life that Daisy was living in an attempt to win her over again. Three major ideals that Gatsby follows are known as, The American Dream, his love for Daisy, and wealth in society.