The Great Gatsby

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“The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy who loves you.” Markus Zusak wrote this in his novel The Book Thief. People always want the things that they cannot have. Sometimes, even when they finally reach what they want they realize it is not what they want anymore. Now they want to find something new that is impossible and hard to get. The theme for Great Gatsby is that some people spend their whole life wanting and chasing after something that they do not already or cannot ever have. Three different examples from the book that help support this theme is when Daisy and Tom are cheating on each other, Jay Gatsby is searching and trying to revive the love he had with Daisy, and Myrtle’s death because of her relationship with Tom. Through out the book you see Tom going behind Daisy’s back to see his mistress while later Daisy is seen with Jay Gatsby. One quote that related to this conflict in the book is on page 15 when Jordan says, “Tom’s got some woman in New York.” This is when Tom receives a telephone call during dinner and leaves the room to answer it. Later we find out that Myrtle was also cheating on her husband. They want to both get a divorce and go out and marry each other, but Tom uses the excuse that his wife is extremely Catholic and would never go for a divorce. In reality Daisy is not catholic at all. Tom only says this because he keeps going to Myrtle thinking that she is what he wants, but he can never let go of Daisy. He keeps thinking that he is not happy but he will not let go of the past. This takes us back to people always wanting what they cannot have. Once you put something right in the palm of their hands they decide that they do not want it anymore. Another quote is on page 133. “She’s not leav... ... middle of paper ... ... going to marry Myrtle. In the end Daisy never wanted to leave Tom for Jay. She only wanted what she could not have. Tom never truly wanted to divorce Daisy to marry Myrtle. He stuck with what he had rather than what he would never get. “The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy who loves you.” Daisy, Tom, and Jay all went after something they could never have. For Daisy and Tom they had a chance to run off with what they finally wanted. In the end they changed their minds. Some people always want the things that they do not already have. They want something fun and mysterious. Not many people stick with their first dreams. Once they reach them they want something new. That is why the theme to this novel is that some people spend their whole life wanting and chasing after something that they do not already or cannot ever have. Works Cited Great Gatsby

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