In the 1920s, the American culture was born. For the first time ever, Americans from coast to coast, were now able to listen to the same music, enjoy the same past times, watch movies, and buy the same goods. The economy was booming thanks to the concepts of credit and mass production. People of riches were living lavish lifestyles at the time. Among the rich, was Daisy Buchanan. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald includes a constant symbolization of Daisy and the color white. Her house’s windows are glistening white, she owned a white car, her white pearls, her white wedding, the white curtains and flowers, and she wears white dresses often. The color white shows how she is made out to be beautiful, pure, and innocent. She is, in fact, nowhere …show more content…
Daisy and Tom Buchanan have been living within an unhappy marriage for nearly 5 years. Tom had been cheating on Daisy since the first week of their marriage. Recently, Daisy had been aware that Tom has been having a long-time affair with Myrtle Wilson, but she also knew that a divorce would be looked down upon by everyone else. Tom’s reason for not leaving Daisy is because of his mistress’s social class. Tom even makes the statement, “Everything will go overboard once there is intermarriage between black and white” (The Great Gatsby, 130). Although this contributes to his other racist views, this statement shows that he was strongly against the concept of the rich marrying the poor. In Tom’s perspective, the difference between the rich and poor social classes was just as clear as the black and white skin colors. Tom feared Myrtle would be bad for his self-image because she lived in poverty, compared to his riches. And Daisy, on the other hand, is only with Tom because she felt that Gatsby would not be able to provide her with everything she …show more content…
The aftermath of these tragic events led to Daisy and Tom leaving everything behind in Long Island. “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness… and let other people clean up the mess they had made” – Nick (Chpt 9) They moved on and, with their money, brought a new home and a new life elsewhere. Ironically, Daisy’s greed led her to choose Tom and his security and wealth over Gatsby’s love, just as she did while Gatsby was at war. She once again moves on and leaves him in the past. Her and Tom end up moving away without even leaving their new address. Daisy does not even bother to attend Gatsby’s funeral. Daisy is introduced to readers as a symbolism of the color white, by seeming innocent, beautiful, and pure. She is eventually known for being cold, selfish, careless, greedy, shallow, unsympathetic, and materialistic. Even though she has all of these negative attributes, Daisy is still looked upon as the embodiment of the American Dream. Daisy is not just a shallow gold digger, she is a tragic lover who was corrupted by greed and money and materialistic things. Her whole life shows the extreme extent of how the love and lust for money affected Americans in the
In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the character Daisy consistently deceives the other characters in the novel through how they appear and act. Near the beginning of the novel, Daisy acts consistently angelic, surrounded by bright lights and white. The color white is typically associated with purity and heavenly, but as the novel progresses, it is clearly shown that she is not. This is shown by how Daisy interacts with the people in the lower class.
Although, he still achieved his original goal, Gatsby’s vast ambitions took a different route when his goals begun to solely revolve around getting Daisy back. After one of his parties, Nick discovers that Gatsby aspires to go back to the days when Daisy and him were deeply in love without anything hindering them, “He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy,” (110). Gatsby’s life, which he had spent pursuing his dreams of mass prosperity, now centers exclusively on Daisy and his continual pining after her. Unlike Daisy who has Tom, her husband, to fall back on, Gatsby only has Daisy and has spent the past five years of his life utterly devoted to seeing her again.
When they met again in the future, Gatsby kept telling Daisy to leave Tom and tell him that she never loved him. He wanted Daisy to really tell him, so their lives could begin all over again and it that the situation would be in the past. The thing was, Daisy had loved both of them equally. She didn’t want to leave Tom, even though she sees what Gatsby had done for her. Gatsby keeps expecting this version of their life together, and Daisy notices it too, but what happened in the past couldn’t be changed.
“ She wanted her life shaped now, immediately -- and the decision must be made by some force-- of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality-- that was close at hand.” (151) Gatsby loved Daisy and didn’t hesitate for one moment when taking the blame. Daisy didn’t feel the same way, she realized how unstable Gatsby was and decided to return back to Tom. After she supposedly loved Gatsby so much. If this would’ve been told as a love story, Daisy wouldn’t had left Gatsby like that.
The daisy is a mixture of white peltes and a bright yellow inside and these two parts of the flower come together to create a symbolism of love. Daisy is most like the flower in this way as she has two sides, one where she wants true love with Gatsby and the other that is obsessed with money. This main character’s sides, unlike the daisy, do not come together to create a lovely person but rather a selfish lover. Eventually, Daisy declares her love in front of her husband when she tells Gatsby “I love you now—isn’t that enough? ().
The Downside of the American Dream In the United States, everyone regardless of race, religion, and gender are granted equal opportunity to achieve their American Dream. In The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, he presents the American experience of achieving the American dream. Fitzgerald uses symbolism, imagery, and similes to demonstrate the factors that led to the corruption of ones’ American dream.
Daisy is a victim of denying what is below the surface. This is seen in many different aspects throughout the novel. By approaching reality in a deeper way, everything will automatically become more complicated in countless ways. Even as readers, we do not know everything there is to know, especially when dealing with Jay Gatsby, but what we do know still manages to be contradicted by the complicated character of Daisy. It is recognizable that Daisy continually denies reality for her own convenience within her individual relationships mainly involving Tom and Gatsby, which deal with Tom’s affair, the situation of Gatsby, the feeling of regret following the realization of her first love, and her past of loving Tom.
In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the character Daisy deceives the other characters in the novel through how they appear and act. Near the beginning of the novel, Daisy acts angelic, surrounded by bright lights and white. The color white is typically associated with purity and heavenly, but as the novel progresses, it is clearly shown that she is not. When Daisy interacts with the people in the lower class, she proves how low she views them.
The Great Gatsby is an American novel written by Scott Fitzgerald. On the surface, the book revolves around the concept of romance, the love between two individuals. However, the novel incorporates less of a romantic scope and rather focuses on the theme of the American Dream in the 1920s. Fitzgerald depicts the 1920’s as an era of decline in moral values. The strong desire for luxurious pleasure and money ultimately corrupts the American dream which was originally about individualism.
“I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.” Garrison Keillor, has been called, "One of the most perceptive and witty commentators about Midwestern life" by Randall Balmer in Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism. Throughout The Great Gatsby, Gatsby shows how blind he is when it comes to Daisy. In the novel Gatsby shows the love and compassion that he has for Daisy. Throughout The Great Gatsby, Gatsby reveals the compassion he has for Daisy throughout the choices that he makes.
Tom begins to worry since Daisy and Gatsby are spending so much time together, ¨I think he was afraid they would dart down the street and out of his life forever¨ (Fitzgerald 126). Daisy causes all this stress because she wanted to have a little risk in her constant life with Tom. Another reaction this caused was the Wilsons because Myrtle saw Tom, Jordan, and Nick in one car and immediately assumed that Jordan, who was dressed in white, was Daisy Buchanan. Daisy doesn´t know who Tom´s mistress is but her decision made things a lot harder for both of them as they had another problem to take care of. As well as Myrtle, her husband, George found out about Myrtles affair unaware that it was one of his customers, causing him to make them move away, and Tom knew that once they stopped making him tense about his mistress moving.
We are first introduced to gatsby in the end of chapter 1 When he is staring across the bay at a green light then he disappears. Later in chapter 3 Nick meets Gatsby and they become friends. Gatsby’s dream is to get with daisy but he has to find a way to get around Tom. “Gatsby Bought that House so daisy would be just across the bay”(Fitzgerald 78). This quote show Gatsby is a very mysterious character and it also shows he must have history with daisy.
The Negative Influence of Wealth Wealth and prosperity are the core of living a lavish lifestyle and having a successful life. However, money can influence people into debauchery. In the book, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald introduces to us to some of the dangers of being rich. Most people in the Great Gatsby were very privileged, and they lived a lavish lifestyle.
Thesis: In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays Daisy as the classic American girl, thus Fitzgerald uses social expectations of white women to characterize Daisy as a two dimensional stereotype. In the beginning of the novel, Daisy is introduced as the wife of Tom, together creating the exemplar of American couples; however, these social expectations limit the identity of Daisy as she is served as a complimentary character to Tom. Daisy demonstrates Tom’s power and authority when by diminishing her dignity.