The Great Gatsby Analysis

Myrtle yearns to be with Tom and live in his wealth but is prevented from doing so by Tom and Daisy. For instance, when Daisy tries to leave Tom for Gatsby, Tom does not exactly dismiss Myrtle, “…but there is no question that she would eventually be discarded” (Donaldson). Myrtle is so infatuated with Tom, she forgot that he can just as well choose Daisy over her. He has the upper hand, as a rich man with control over women especially when it comes to his relationships. While to Tom, Myrtle’s gender has made her just one of his possessions, to Myrtle, Tom’s rich and high status as a man has made him her only path to a higher class. Due to her infatuation with Tom, she often becomes jealous and possessive when she finds a threat to their relationship. Myrtle is so overcome with desire for Tom that she cannot stand the thought of him with another women. Even when she sees Tom in the car with Jordan Baker, Myrtle’s, “… eyes, wide with jealous terror, were fixed not on Tom, but on Jordan Baker, whom she too to be his wife” (Fitzgerald 125). Myrtle is so convinced that Tom is hers, when in reality, she is really Tom’s. Myrtle has almost forgotten the fact that as an inferior women, she has little control over the situation. The reality is that Tom was in control of the relationship and used Myrtle for his lustrous desires. Tom’s rejection of Myrtle causes her to become overrun with jealousy. In

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.

The plot of The Great Gatsby, a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is driven by Jay Gatsby's

Myrtle Wilson, also married, hides her love affair from her husband, George Wilson. She is extremely unhappy with her husband claiming when they met, "[she] thought he knew something…but he was not fit to [even] lick [her] shoe" (39). It is evident how important class and wealth is to Myrtle. Once she found out her husband was not rich she became utterly dissapointed. But when she first met Tom, "he had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes and [she] couldn 't keep [her] eyes off him" (40). She is immediately attracted to Tom’s obvious wealth. Myrtle claims Tom Buchanan is the love of her life, that being said she uses Tom to escape the “Valley of Ashes.” She longs to live the American Dream amongst the wealthy, but struggles to keep up with the

Myrtle is unhappy with her standard of living and George. A quote to support this is, “I married him because I thought he was a gentleman” she said finally. “I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe” (2.34). It is shown in this quote that Myrtle overestimated George’s money because he’s a mechanic and is unhappy she is living over a garage. In addition, that’s where Tom comes in and she has an affair with him. A quote to assist this would be, “Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He’s so dumb he doesn’t know she’s alive” (2.26). In analysis of this quote, Myrtle uses Tom to get away from George and because Tom is wealthy and buys things for her. There was more than one reason to Myrtle’s affair with

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.

“The orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” is the unattainable goal of those living in Tom and Daisy’s world—a world where lives are wasted chasing the unreachable (Fitzgerald 180). In his 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, author F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests that making any progress whatsoever toward this aspiration often requires people to establish facades that enable them to progress socially, but that a crippled facade will backfire and cause detriment to its creator. In the passage where Nick realizes who Gatsby is on page 48, Nick observes two different versions of Gatsby—one that is reassuring and truthful and another who “pick[s] his words with care” (Fitzgerald 48). Nick is at first attracted to Gatsby’s constructed

Tom holds the power in his relationship with Myrtle lying about the reason why their relationship cannot go

Tom’s little infidelity with Myrtle was a start to Wilson losing it. One day Tom goes to Wilson’s shop and witnesses Myrtle being locked up in a cage for something he did. “He had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life apart from him in another world, and the shock had made him physically sick” (Fitzgerald, 124) ‘“ I’ve got my wife locked in up there,” explained Wilson calmly”’ (Fitzgerald, 136). Tom’s infidelity with Myrtle made Wilson so sick that he had to lock up her own wife so she wouldn’t leave him. Myrtle was everything Wilson had and he would do anything if she was taken away from him. This started the fuse that would later explode into chaos later

His arrogance causes him to taint his “committed” marriage to Daisy, and have an affair with another character dissatisfied with life, Myrtle. Myrtle explains, “Well I married [George], and that’s the difference between your case and mine. I married him because I thought he was a gentleman, I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe” (34). Myrtle is yet another character unhappy with their marriage. She feels entitled to be treated better, that she deserves more than her “gentleman” husband, George. Tom is just the person she believes can provide her with all the comforts and luxuries that she desires, using him to weasel her way into the world of the

Throughout the book, Tom Buchanan and George Wilson both seem to be predominate to their wives. While Daisy was chatting, Tom cut her off because he did not want to hear what she was saying. Meanwhile, George locked Myrtle in their house so they could leave town because she had an affair. Wilson states, “I told her she might be able to fool me, but she couldn't fool God.” (159) Wilson tells Myrtle this because he wants her to feel like she is being judged. The unlikeness of the two is that Tom cares for himself more than he does Daisy; George actually loves his wife Myrtle.

The relationship between Tom and Myrtle was different from Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship. Tom, described with physical strength, has his history, abilities, and sensuality that make him right. On the other hand, his wife, Daisy comes out to be the weakest character from a reader’s point of view, because people ask her for a lot (“Great”, Scott). Tom always claimed that he was deeply in love with Daisy, but every chance he had to leave town he went and slept with Myrtle Wilson. She knew Tom was married but that did not stop her from loving him.

Myrtle and Tom use this lie to cope with the fact that they can never truly be together, despite extreme unhappiness in their own marriages. As previously stated, they are provided with stability from their marriages that they do not have to courage to abandon. The impossibility of Tom and Myrtle having a future together is evident when Tom hits Myrtle for repeatedly yelling Daisy’s name (37). Tom, up until this moment, has been able to have the security of a marriage and the passion of an affair both existing in separate spheres. This realization that he ultimately cannot keep living in two separate worlds ultimately pushes Tom to choose his life to Daisy.

“The Great Gatsby” is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published in 1925, it is set on Long Island's North Shore and in New York City from spring to autumn of 1922. The novel takes place following the First World War. American society enjoyed prosperity during the “roaring” as the economy soared. At the same time, prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol as mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers. After its republishing in 1945 and 1953, it quickly found a wide readership and is today widely

Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy causes him to be so fixated on her that he disregards his morals. He goes as far as firing all of his staff; he tells Nick, “I wanted somebody who wouldn't gossip. Daisy comes over quite often--in the afternoons,” (Fitzgerald 114). Gatsby is so obsessed with Daisy that he fires all of his trusted staff in exchange for time with Daisy that does not further his end goal. He was willing to completely alter the lives of his staff, and the people who financially rely on them, because of his neurotic desire to transport himself back to when it was just him and Daisy. This obsession also causes him to be manipulative and immoral in an attempt to create a life where they could be together. In fact, “...he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same stratum as herself--that he was fully able to take care of her,” (149). Gatsby knew that they could not be together due to their vastly different social classes,but nonetheless he still strived to draw Daisy into his disillusioned reality. He also knew that he could not bribe his way out of the war, yet he let her believe that his nonexistent wealth could buy them more time and a way to avoid what