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Literary analysis of Daisy the great gatsby
Literary analysis of Daisy the great gatsby
The importance of daisy to gatsby
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Every individual in the world has an American dream, something one can achieve by working hard and never giving up. However, some individuals realize that their American dream might not be achievable after all. Some individuals such as Dexter and Gatsby, realize that life sometimes might not go the way you want it to. Winter Dreams and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, show that the American Dream, in some cases, may not be fulfilled the way you want it to be.
In Winter Dreams, Dexter, the main character in the story, is unfortunate because of the small amount money of money he owns. His American Dream was to become successful and wealthy and become part of a higher social class. His dream caused him to take a business course at a state
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Although he became successful like he wanted to, his life was not completely filled with enjoyment. He comes across Judy Jones, a girl who he falls in love with at first sight who ends up turning his life upside down. However his feelings toward Judy changed one night on the dark sun porch. Judy says,” There was a man I cared about, and this afternoon he told me out of clear sky that he was poor as a church-mouse. He’d never even hinted it before. Does this sound horribly mundane?”(7) This portrays that Judy doesn’t really care about one’s personality, but how wealthy the individual is. She gives a smile when Dexter talks about how he makes more money than most men do. Judy Jones personality can be expressed just like Daisy is in the Great Gatsby. When Dexter first sees Judy, after getting married to Irene, Judy is wearing a gold ban, has the color gold on her dress, and is wearing gold slippers. Gold, just like in The Great Gatsby, represents wealth. Judy’s obsession for money is clearly indicated by the items that she’s wearing; it is clearly shown that Daisy will do whatever she needs to do to get what she wants; even if its taking advantage of someone. After getting married to …show more content…
However, Gatsby doesn’t realize that Daisy symbolizes corruption. Daises are a type of flower, yellow on the outside and white on the inside. White, in the book, represents peace and a loving kind of nature; yellow, on the other hand, symbolizes gold and wealth. Just like Judy, Daisy only cares about the money, not the personality of an individual. Just like Dexter, Gatsby’s love for Daisy was instant. However, Gatsby was surprised when Daisy married Tom instead of him. Although Daisy already married, we can see how she’s confused on her decision., The narrator says, “Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily. They’re such beautiful shirts she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such-such beautiful shirts before.”(92) This portrays how Daisy is really like. The plethora of shirts and the fabrics, show the wealth that Gatsby has. When Daisy first meets Gatsby, he is poor, which is why Daisy had no interest in him. She regrets marrying Tom because of the future she could have had with Gatsby consisting of money and love, which she couldn’t have with Tom because of his affair with Myrtle. In the book, Nick describes Gatsby and the future. Nick says, “And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He
In “Winter Dreams”, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the lifestyle is all about the American Dream. Dexter Green, the main character, has been searching for that ideal American Dream since he was a young boy. Dexter spent his entire life seeking wealth and Judy Jones, who was in fact the ideal women. In the end of the story the loss of Judy revealed Dexter’s dream for his life, his values, and the values of those around him.
Dexter, although he could have attended a state university, chose to attend an older and more prestigious university in the East. However, he struggled with his limited funds while studying there. After college, he invested in a laundry business, which he grew and eventually became very wealthy. He returned to the golf course to play with the wealthy old men he once caddied for.
While going through stories from books from the past that, I have finally choose my two stories that I liked. Out of all the other stories in the world I have chosen mainly these two because the author is wonderful in creating love stories that end in tragedy, and that’s the type of stories that I am interesting in reading. These two stories that I am going to start talking are “Winter Dreams” and “The Great Gatsby” by the author F. Scott Fitzgerald. These two stories take place in the 1900’s. In the beginning these two stories mention these two people Dexter Green and Jay Gatsby. One’s parents owned the second best grocery store and the other was a poor boy whose parents had no money. But these two have a similarity that makes the story better
The American Dream is only achievable based on your motivation to succeed, your process in which you achieve your dream can be more important than your actual dream. Sometimes it's the journey that makes or breaks you and not the destination. The Great Gatsby, written by Fitzgerald, is based off the idea of the American Dream, and whether it's achievable to all Americans. Many seem to have their own opinions and thoughts on the idea of the American Dream. The idea of the American Dream is sought after by just about anyone. This topic is often mentioned during times of sorrow and death ,as well as through many platforms such as poems, speeches, novels, and essays. Gatsby
Dexter fantasizes his life and falls victim to his adolescent dreams that he is never able to fulfill. In his quest to achieve Judy, Dexter never sees more than the outside beauty of Judy, which haunts him for the rest of his life. Judy simply goes towards the direction of wealth. She confesses that she was breaking off relation with another man just because he was not able to support her financially. Dexter is in love with the idea of having Judy as a wife because of her beauty and her social class, which blinds him from the reality of who Judy is. For Dexter, the American Dream is not just about wealth; it is also about acquiring social status to have the ability to marry a woman who is rich. We see the dark side of the American Dream, where even though the main character achieves success, glory, and wealth, he still cannot find true happiness. This is the irony about the American Dream. One would expect that once he or she achieves wealth and success, they would live happily, but for the main characters in the two works, it brings more pain and suffering. Through the use of irony in Winter Dreams, Fitzgerald exposes the shallowness that comes from the pursuit of American Dream. The pursuit of the American Dream makes Dexter blind and prevents him from achieving true happiness. Similarly, Jay Gatsby also deals with identical problems where he is not able to find happiness because of his desire to gain social status and the woman of his dreams proving another area, where Winter Dreams acts as a microcosm of The Great
In “Winter Dreams”, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dexter’s dream can be related to the American Dream, but Fitzgerald represents it negatively, basically saying that the reality is the American Dream can never be reached. F. Scott Fitzgerald's life is a tragic example of both sides of the American Dream; the joys of young love, wealth and success, and the tragedies associated with excess and failure which shows through in this story (F. Scott).
Two of Fitzgerald’s works, Winter Dreams and The Great Gatsby, have very similar plots. Both features poor young men trying reach wealth. Both protagonist have a women of their dreams in mind. And both men are devastated in the end. However there are some things that make the stories differ. Wether it is in a shape of a narrator or the way the story is written, they do have differences.
Dexter starts a laundry business and becomes very wealthy at a young age. Gatsby becomes very rich and throws elaborate parties to try and show off his wealth to Daisy, while getting her attention. In both stories there is a fantasy of what love is and a perfect women. In these texts, love is based off of wealth, and meeting someone from years before they were even old enough to understand. In both texts, the love is from the look of the women and the idea of them. They are falling for eachother in their young teen ages to middle ages. Judy ends up marrying a man who cheats on her while she stays home with the children. Daisy marries Tom, who cheats on her with someone in New York while she also stays with her children.Tom likes the idea of having control over women in his life, like Myrtle and Daisy: ‘"You're crazy!" he exploded. "I can't speak about what happened five years ago, because I didn't know Daisy then—and I'll be damned if I see how
The scene where Daisy spends time at Gatsby’s and throws his expensive shirts around and says, “They're such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled in the think folds, "It makes me sad because I've never seen such – such beautiful shirts before"(118). This shows how much Daisy thinks of material things, and how she gives them more value and meaning than they should have. Another theme that is not as prevalent but can also be seen is family relationships. The relationship between husband Tom and Daisy is a very rocky relationship. Tom is unfaithful and has been the whole marriage. Even when Daisy was giving birth he was nowhere to be found. She states,” I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool – that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (118). This shows that she hopes her daughter can be oblivious to all the bad things in the world and just live her life as happy as possible. Unlike Daisy, who is not happy in her marriage but stays because she knows she will have her American Dream fulfilled with Tom as her
Daisy’s marriage to Tom is evidence of her association with money because she married Tom for his wealth rather than for love, and when explaining to Nick why he’s infatuated with Daisy, Gatsby calls her a “golden girl” in reference to her old money background and how that wealth affected the way she speaks and acts (120). Although women were treated differently on the basis of gender during the 1920s, Daisy is objectified due to both her wealth and gender. This obvious association with money influences the way characters in the novel treat Daisy. As a character, her ideas are brushed off due to her objectification which is evident in the way Tom asserts that Nick shouldn’t believe everything Daisy says. This is due to Tom’s knowledge on some level that Daisy stays with him due to his wealth. Also, the way Daisy wishes for her daughter to be “a beautiful little fool” indicates her own recognition that both she and her daughter are solely valued for their wealth and appearance (17). Thus, Daisy’s association with the color gold, and subsequently money, demonstrates her
They also relied on their deceitful behavior. Many times, they were dishonest to people in order to get what they wanted. The main idea of this book dealt with Daisy’s dishonesty towards Gatsby. She tricked him into believing that she would be with him, but Nick knew better than this. He observed Daisy’s eyes as they “fell on Jordan with a sort of appeal as though she has never, all along, intended doing anything at all” (170). There was no room for true love in her heart. Her heart was consumed by a desire for money. She didn’t intend on being with Gatsby after his real identity was exposed. She was not trustworthy or honest. Another instance where Daisy’s deceitfulness was revealed was when she tells Nick that he was “an absolute rose”(19). Nick knew she was lying. This tells the reader early on that Daisy can’t be trusted. Also, the white dress that Daisy often wears gave off a sense of deception. It made her seem pure, innocent, and perfect. However, she was not this way at all. Her main concern was her own well-being. The white dress also could have symbolized the “absence of all desires”(“The Great Gatsby”). The color white is often associated with blank spaces. So, Daisy had no desire to love those who were attracted to her unless they could support
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Short Story, “Winter Dreams”, he suggests that the American Dream is a desire for glittery things. On the concept of the American Dream that a person’s success depends more on his or her efforts than on factors such as class or race. Dexter wanted to have the glittery things, but he didn’t want or need them as badly as Judy because he wasn’t raised in the same environment. He felt that he didn’t like Judy at first because she has the glittery things. Once she mature and grew up, he liked her way more and felt a connection because she felt compassion for someone else besides herself. This is also in contrast in today’s society because if you don’t have a smartphone or social media, then people could or would think differently of you.
Daisy’s original impression of Gatsby is evident in her early letters to him, “...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). Daisy loved Gatsby under the false hope that they belonged to the same social class. She grew up surrounded by riches, never working a day in her life, and she could not comprehend the struggles of a man who must work for the food he eats each day. Daisy knew that she must marry when she is beautiful, for being a beautiful rich girl of good social standing was her highest commodity and most valuable chip in marrying well. In order to live a secure life, she had to find someone the had the means to provide for her extravagant lifestyle, and the deep care for her that would allow Daisy to do as she pleased. The only definition of love Daisy knew was one of disillusioned power and commitments under false pretenses in order to keep the wealthy continually rich. Daisy acknowledges the false pretenses of marriage for the wealthy in how she describes her daughter’s future. She tells Nick, “‘And I hope she’ll be a fool- that’s the best thing a girl can be in this
The American Dream should be viewed as a personal calling, to be free to do what you want. The American Dream is the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative according to the Oxford dictionary. This term is weaved throughout the two novels that will be compared in this essay. F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, The Great Gatsby, provides a look behind the closed doors of those who live a lavish and grand lifestyle while having the American Dream. As you read through the novel you see that looks can be deceitful, and even those of wealth who have the American Dream are unhappy and really aren’t living a dream. Yet sometimes life is not a dream right away as Langston
She is a self-centered, young girl who is a part of a very successful and wealthy family. Judy’s father, Mr. Mortimer Jones, is a regular at Sherry Island Golf Club. Judy is very popular amongst the male population, and has them all waiting for their chance to have a possible date with her. She has told to been seen with a new possible suitor practically everyday. “When a new man came to town, every one dropped out- dates were automatically cancelled” (126). Judy Jones enjoyed the idea of boys running after her and was amused of herself. “She was entertained only by the gratification of her desires and by the direct exercise of her own charm” (126). The character, Dexter Green, falls in love with the golden girl, after Judy runs into him in the process of escaping a bad date. Dexter captures Judy’s beauty as practically appearing golden. “Judy Jones, a slender enamelled follin cloth of gold: gold in a band at her head, gold in two slipper points at her dresses hem. The fragile glow of her face seemed to blossom as she smiled at him” (129). Like Fitzgerald 's other “Golden Girls” Judy compares with them in every