Is there such a thing as true love?

Nothing is more important, to most people, than friendships and family, thus, by breaking those bonds, it draws an emotional response from the readers. Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan had a relationship before he went off to fight in the war. When he returned home, he finds her with Tom Buchanan, which seems to make him jealous since he still has feelings for Daisy. He wanted Daisy “to go to Tom and say: ‘I never loved you” (Fitzgerald 118) Gatsby eventually tells Tom that his “wife doesn’t love [him]” and that she only loves Gatsby (Fitzgerald 121). But the unpleasant truth is that Daisy never loved anyone, but she loved something: money. Daisy “wanted her life shaped and the decision made by some force of of money, of unquestionable practicality” (Fitzgerald 161). The Roaring Twenties were a time where economic growth swept the nation and Daisy was looking to capitalize on that opportunity. Her greed for material goods put her in a bind between two wealthy men, yet they are still foolish enough to believe that she loved them. Jay Gatsby is a man who has no relationships other than one with Nick Caraway, so he is trying to use his wealth to lure in a greedy individual to have love mend his

His dream turns into a dark nightmare that leads to his untimely downfall. His romantic idealism has not prepared him for the corrupt world in which he enters. Gatsby is surrounded by proof of the unhappiness that “success” can bring, as seen especially through Tom and Daisy. Their marriage is full of lies and deceit, and they are both searching for something greater than what they already have. Gatsby is so blinded by his dream that he does not see that money cannot buy love or happiness. Fitzgerald effectively offers a powerful critique of a materialistic society and the effects it can have on one’s hopes and dreams.

Many Americans yearn for a life of luxury; a life of class and entitlement. Some of these people try to act upon this desire to acquire this lifestyle. Throughout The Great Gatsby, the author uses the novel to introduce the idea of how his dream is practically unattainable. Unattainable, that is, if you weren't entitled to live this luxurious life. Through the relationships of Tom and Daisy Buchanan as well as George and Myrtle Wilson, F. Scott Fitzgerald criticizes how love forces the American Dream to grow more and more unattainable over time due to external factors. However, in the end, the characters will be stuck in their original relationship arrangements.

Fitzgerald uses the life and death of Gatsby to illustrate that the new American dream is unobtainable and that no matter how far a person gets in life the dream of satisfaction through materialism is impossible. Daisy and Tom’s marriage was used to demonstrate that even those who are thought to have reached the American dream really still have no true happiness as they each had to search for it in others. These concepts brought forth by Fitzgerald are not to totally bash the human craving for happiness, but to inform them that the new ideas presented by society that they think will bring them happiness are lies. Thus those who go in search of happiness through materialism will always come up empty handed.

Love, love, love; the only thing everybody talks about. Every movie, every series, every story talks about how two people fall in love and live happily ever after. All stories get to the conclusion that the love the couple shared was unique and that the two lovers matched perfectly together. But what happens when two lovers do not belong to the same social class? What happens when they don’t share common things they like? Are they not meant to be? “In love everything is possible”, someone once said. When someone is in love, he/she would make everything that he/she cans to make his/her lover happy and keep him/her by their side forever. F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century, depicts a love story in his novel The Great Gatsby and shows how love can change a person. Gatsby, the man from which the story takes its name, fell in love with Daisy when he was young officer just before going to war. As the story goes on, he falls more and more in love with her, but he loses her to a richer man. Gatsby’s love for Daisy

While Gatsby was just a young man, he was highly awed by Daisy’s representation of old money and her life of luxuries. Gatsby was intensely in love with “young” Daisy, so he wanted to become the best possible version of himself for her. When Gatsby was off at war, Daisy continued in her quest for wealth in her false life. Gatsby “was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprison[ed] and preserv[ed],” however if he promised her money, that’d be his life long goal: money for Daisy (150). Although Daisy loved Gatsby when she was young, the aspect of being rich was a higher priority. For Gatsby, the distance made his love for Daisy even more desirable. Unfortunately Daisy’s “voice is full of money, [for]…that was [her] inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it…high in a white palace the kings daughter, [to be] the golden girl” was all Daisy truly desired (120). In the end, the easier decision for wealth was to marry a man whom she liked the idea of, but never actually loved: Tom Buchanan.

...ief that a place with the aristocracy is further paramount than love. Fitzgerald’s criticism lies in the sense that there can be no love and money; either money exists in a person’s life, or love exists. For both Wharton and Fitzgerald, they hold the thought that, for the aristocracy, there is a choice, and within this choice is where their criticisms are aligned.

As a young man, Jay Gatsby was poor with nothing but his love for Daisy.  He had attempted to woe her, but a stronger attraction to money led her to marry another man.  This did not stop Gatsby’s goal of winning this woman for himself though, and he decided to improve his life anyway he could until he could measure up to Daisy’s standards.  He eventually gained connections in what would seem to be the wrong places, but these gave him the opportunity he needed to "get rich quick."  Gatsby’s enormous desire for Daisy controlled his life to the point that he did not even question the immorality of the dealings that he involved himself in to acquire wealth.  Eventually though, he was able to afford a "castle" in a location where he could pursue Daisy effectively.  His life ambition had successfully moved him to the top of the "new money" class of society, but he lacked the education of how to promote his wealth properly.  Despite the way that Gatsby flaunted his money, he did catch Daisy’s attention.  A chaotic affair followed for a while until Daisy was overcome by pressures from Gatsby to leave her husband and by the realization that she belonged to "old money" and a more proper society.

Characters in books often mirror the author's feelings towards the world around them. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald suggested the moral decline of the period in American history through the interpersonal relationships among his characters. The situations in the lives of the characters show the worthlessness of materialism, the futile quest of Myrtle and Gatsby, and how America 's moral values had diminished- through the actions of Daisy, Tom, Jordan, and Gatsby's party guests. Despite his newly acquired fortune, Gatsby still cannot afford his one true wish, therefore he cannot buy everything which is important to Daisy. "..Their love is founded upon feelings from the past, these give it, notwithstanding Gatsby's insistence on being able to repeat the past , an inviolability. It exists in the world of money and corruption but is not of it." (Lewis 48 )

Mirroring his own unsuccessful love story, Fitzgerald incorporates the idea of failing marriages into his novel. ““Neither of them can stand the person they’re married to” (Fitzgerald 33).” Fitzgerald implies that marriage in the 1920’s was so corrupted by wealth that though the couples nearly hated each other, they still remained together for monetary and convenience purposes. Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda Sayre much like Daisy, married Fitzgerald for money. Until Fitzgerald started to become rich off his first novel, she had refused to marry him, much like how Daisy broke her promise to Gatsby and married Tom Buchanan. Zelda also cheated on Fitzgerald with a French naval aviator, mimicking Myrtle Wilson who pursued her own American Dream through having an affair with Tom (Willett).