Fueled by the idea of love, Myrtle and Gatsby, the two most ambitious characters in the book, try to push through the gates of the upper class in order to be amongst the elite and to be regarded as their superiors. However, while the two characters are both willing to violate conventional standards of right and wrong for money, Gatsby’s motivation for wealth and status is fueled by his love for Daisy, whereas Myrtle utilizes her “love” with Tom in order to attain wealth and status. The final question that readers have to ask at the end of the book is: who had the most success? Both Gatsby and Myrtle are the two bridges between the lower and upper classes in that they do not come from a privileged background yet they take action that allows them direct contact with the wealthy upper class. They both represent goal-driven individuals unhappy with their status in society and state of their lives who are …show more content…
While Gatsby always wanted wealth, his main incentive to become rich is his love for Daisy, the true love of his life. Gatsby uses money for love. Myrtle, on the other hand, truly desires money. Myrtle uses “love” in the form of a so-called romantic relationship with Tom to attain the lifestyle she desperately desires. Even though she says that she loves Tom, Myrtle, the most independent woman in the story, wants wealth so much that she puts up with a lot of humiliation at the expense of Tom whom she really is just using to better her social status. Myrtle’s affair with Tom is not because she actually loves him more than George. What she really loves is the life that she thinks that Tom can get her. Her motivations are more superficial than Gatsby’s and are illustrated by how impressed she was with Tom’s suit and her distain for the fact that George had to borrow another man’s suit to marry
A more thorough investigation of The Great Gatsby is necessary to uncover a well-disguised theme by Fitzgerald in this work. Upon a simple read through one would probably not notice the great similarities of Jay Gatsby and Myrtle Wilson, but the two characters seemed to have the same agenda for their lives. While Gatsby took the route of acquiring money at all costs to join the upper class of society and to be acceptable in the eyes of a woman, Myrtle chose to make her way up in society at the cost of her marriage by attaching herself to money. The underlying question is who had the most success.
F. Scott Fitzgerald laced The Great Gatsby (1925) with his own social commentary on the decay of Jazz Age society due to white Americans. Fitzgerald knew of the growing divisions among America’s white community in the nineteen-twenties, and he utilized The Great Gatsby’s characters to show how the division will cause the end of the Jazz Age. Tom Buchanan, a arrogant man from old money, optimizes the views of eugenicists like Lothrop Stoddard, who believed in levels of whiteness within the white race; ultimately, Tom’s love interests provide the backbone for Fitzgerald’s distaste for the social stratification of the white community. Daisy Fay Buchanan, Tom’s picturesque wife, represents the peak of the whiteness spectrum, and Myrtle
The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald F.S, 1925) is a novel which focuses on narrator Nick Carraway after he moves to New York in 1922. Nick is drawn into the world of wealthy and mysterious neighbour Jay Gatsby, and his quest to rekindle his love with Nick’s cousin Daisy Buchanan. This does not quite go to plan, and an unraveling chain of events leads to a fatal hit-and-run with Gatsby’s own death following shortly after. This essay will however be focusing on the women of the novel: Daisy Buchanan; Jordan Baker; and Myrtle Wilson. These three women are all radically different from one another upon first glance, but all are subject to the sexism of the time period. Fitzgerald portrays love as a battle, a “struggle for power in an
Love is already a battlefield, but what if two people are loving the same person? Which one of these men will prove their love. There can only be one man on top of the battle. Who will be top dog. Who will have the most desired love. In Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, Tom and Gatsby both love Daisy, but their approach is very different.
Daisy and Edmond are different now because Edmond is scared because the stuff he has seen in the war people dying and more. He can barely talk to her, there relationship is different now. They don't talk much, but it is getting better. They are talking more, but not a lot, It will probably take a long time to fix their relationship. One of the quotes Edmond says is “There were thousands of stories just like this, one and mostly they didn't end happily” When Daisy got pick up from and went back to the Usa and she was there for along time. (Like 3-4 years) When she was in the Usa, Edmond was captured by the enemies and he seen kids starve and die. He was a lot of scars on his body and in his mental mind. Edmond seen kids and adults die and seen
Daisy knows very well that tom is cheating on her, but doesn’t care because it's more convenient to stay in her unhappy marriage. Even though she wants to be with Gatsby, she wants to keep her social status and being with Tom makes this all the easier. Now, this is quite the opposite of Myrtle. She has a loving husband who would do anything for her, but her social status is all she cares about. Myrtle is willing to hurt George and ruin their marriage in order to climb up the social ladder. Neither of these women have respect for themselves. Both Daisy and Myrtle allow Tom to treat them
The main quote from The Great Gatsby that shows that if you try to live above your class you will be punished if from chapter seven where it states, “A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and shouting--before he could move from his door he business was over.” (Fitzgerald 137) This “business” that Fitzgerald was referring to was Myrtle being
Daisy and Myrtle both want money but only one of them does and that’s Daisy. Myrtle lives in a two story building by a slow gas station that her and her husband runs. Daisy is always wearing top notch dresses and accessories while Myrtle is the opposite. She wears dingy somewhat old clothes. Not to mention, Daisy does absolutely nothing with her days. She just does whatever she pleases to do. Myrtle has to help her husband with their business just so they can survive and try to get business at their gas station. She can’t just doddle like Daisy. I believe they both have the same hopes and dreams but they’re just starting out different. I also think their hopes and dreams are the same as in their love life too. Daisy wishes to be with Gatsby and Myrtle wants to be with Tom. Although, Myrtle probably wants to be with Tom because of the life he could give her, Daisy already lives that life and she still would even if she went with Gatsby instead. So I think that Daisy is aiming to be happy with this choice and since Myrtle is so desperate to have money she doesn’t care if Tom is a cheater or mean. You can see in this quote from the “The Great Gatsby” while Myrtle is with Tom she buys all kinds of presents for herself and she doesn’t feel bad about it. She takes her time and gets whatever she wants.
There were many parts in the Great Gatsby that discusses about love, Its one of the most known parts in the book. The author of the Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald the main character consists of Jay Gatsby, Nick Caraway, Daisy Buchanan, Tom Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and many others. Love, desire, and sex are a major motive for nearly every character in the Great Gatsby.
The first time that the reader catches an insight of Myrtle, Fitzgerald develops Myrtle to be a mere object of Tom's’ desire. Fitzgerald does this to extenuate the fact that Tom will not move on past Daisy to be with her. Tom “got some women” that supposedly is a secret but there is a lack of secretism on Myrtles end seeing as she is now calling during evening meals from “New York” just to talk to Tom. This further proves that she is in need of attention, something her husband can not fully give her at any random moment of the day. Myrtle is willing to express herself even when she’s already married. It reveals that she is deceiving her own husband, who is later mentioned in the novel. This allows for Myrtle to be looked down upon by the reader, it also entails her to be seen as an attention seeker. Again, Fitzgerald appeals to present-day behaviors by allowing Myrtle to be viewed as someone who wants to be showcased. Almost everyone can relate that they’ve wanted attention in their life at some point. This connects Myrtle to the reader's past or current feelings. Fitzgerald uses this to let readers feel compassion for Myrtle which emphasizes all she needs is for someone to properly love her, treat her, and show her what she needs to do to become successful in her
Gatsby on the surface, does truly appear to be pursuing Daisy. However, Gatsby’s need for Daisy could rather be an unconscious facade. The facade covers up the depressing truth. The truth is that Gatsby has been pursuing the “idea” of Daisy. “Idea” as in an interpretation of her that may not be entirely true. A five year gap separated the time between Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship before the war and their meeting postwar. Five years was plenty of time for Gatsby to idealize a completely unrealistic ideal of Daisy. The Daisy he idealized would pick up their love right where they left off prewar. Gatsby grew way too close to this idealization and set all his hopes on this. It seems as if the relationship does not work, it will break Gatsby.
Lying has deadly effects on both the individual who lies and those around them. This concept is demonstrated in The Great Gatsby. Although Gatsby, Tom and Myrtle have different motives for being deceitful, they all lie in order to fulfill their desires and personal needs. Myrtle’s desire to be wealthy is illustrated when she first meets Tom, dressed in his expensive clothing, as her attitude changes when she puts on the luxurious dress and when she encourages Tom to buy her a dog. Tom’s deception is clear when he hides his affair with Myrtle by placing Myrtle in a different train, withholding the truth from Mr. Wilson of the affair and convincing Myrtle and Catherine that he will one day marry Myrtle. Gatsby tries to convince himself and others that he is the son of wealthy people, he creates an appearance that he is a successful, educated man through the books in his library and assures himself that Daisy loves him. Tom’s dishonesty reveals that he is selfish, while Gatsby’s distortions expose his insecurities, and Myrtle’s misrepresentations show that her sole focus in life is to achieve materialistic success. Gatsby and Myrtle both lie in order to obtain the “American dream.” However, Tom, who appears to already have achieved the “American dream”, deceives others out of boredom and because he takes his wealthy lifestyle for granted. F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrates the human flaw of dishonesty for personal gain and how lies have inevitably tragic consequences in his characterization of Gatsby, Myrtle and Tom.
The want for an extravagant life is the thing that draws Myrtle into having an unsanctioned romance with Tom. This choice damages her marriage with George, which prompts her demise and loss of genuine joy. Myrtle has the expectation and want for an impeccable, well off and renowned sort life. She appreciates perusing tattle magazines which speak to her desire for the life of "the rich and well known". This shows how the one reason she needs to be with Tom, is on account of he speaks to the life of "the rich and acclaimed". At the point when Myrtle initially got hitched to George Wilson, she suspected that she was wild about him and believed that they were cheerful being as one. Myrtle says, "The main insane I was the point at which I wedded
Jay Gatsby and Myrtle Wilson, both symbolize the American dream that people go after, the want for wealth and power and to be in the higher social class. That is why Fitzgerald has two such different but similar characters in the novel. To show how high they want for money is, how much hope it really brings to people. Too much money is everything, money is a means for survival in this world. And that's what Gatsby and Myrtle show through their high vitality and high levels of want and need to become part of the wealthy social class.
As a nurse, I also found in Jay Gatsby an injury, a physical pain that tormented him day and night. The pain that a nurse can look at and try to cure and heal, but yet is somewhat impossible. It is the pain of Denial. However, Jay Gatsby was not the only one that had an American Dream and got hurt, there were others, others that died because they thought that their American Dream was real. Take for instance, a young lady named Myrtle. She was a wife and at the same time a lover of another. She was the lover of Tom, who was Daisy's husband, and Daisy was Jay Gatsby's love. A good connection there, right? Myrtle loved Tom, with all her heart. He was her American Dream, and yet she didn't find love near him, but death among his wife, who killed her accidentally. A tragic for a young lady like Myrtle.