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Literary Analysis Of'The Great Gatsby
Literary analysis for the great gatsby
Analysis of gatsby
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The Great Gatsby contains a love triangle between Tom Buchanan, Daisy Buchanan, and Jay Gatsby. Initially, Daisy was in love with Gatsby, but she married Tom while he was away at war. Gatsby was left brokenhearted with a strong determination to win her back and prove that he was worthy of her. Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby are vastly different people with two things in common; their money and, most importantly, their desire to have Daisy.
Tom Buchanan is described as having a strong and repugnant presence. He was a star athlete at Yale and is restless after his glory days of playing there, “…had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven-a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterwards savours of anti-climax” (page 10). He is arrogant and seems to believe that he can have anything that he wants. Even though he has a wife and child, he has no problem with having a mistress on the side and does not care that others, including his wife, know about it. In addition, Tom is very self-absorbed and cares only about himself and his own desires. Tom was what Daisy’s family considered to be suitable for their daughter. That, along with his money, is mainly why she married him.
Jay Gatsby, originally named James Gatz, has a smaller presence than Tom and acts more like a child with a desire for approval. Gatsby is able to stay hidden at his parties and remains mysterious to his party guests. Gatsby grew up poor in North Dakota and reinvented himself into the person that Nick meets because he had never been satisfied with his life. Unlike Tom, Gatsby does everything with Daisy in mind. He built a gigantic mansion directly across from he...
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...even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach” (10). He does not necessarily flaunt his money like Gatsby does, but it is still obvious that he has it. Tom is more comfortable with his wealth since he has always had it. Gatsby, on the other hand, shows off a little more and is more extravagant with everything.
Many aspects of Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby are polar opposites. They grew up differently, they look at life from vastly diverse views, and they treat people contrarily. Their commonalities lie in their wealth and their connection to Daisy, although they differ in many aspects there as well. At the end of The Great Gatsby, Tom gets to keep living his privileged lifestyle and he still has Daisy while Gatsby is left dead and betrayed.
Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York, NY: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1995. Print.
The character of Jay Gatsby was a wealthy business man, who the author developed as arrogant and tasteless. Gatsby's love interest, Daisy Buchanan, was a subdued socialite who was married to the dim witted Tom Buchanan. She is the perfect example of how women of her level of society were supposed to act in her day. The circumstances surrounding Gatsby and Daisy's relationship kept them eternally apart. For Daisy to have been with Gatsby would have been forbidden, due to the fact that she was married. That very concept of their love being forbidden, also made it all the more intense, for the idea of having a prohibited love, like William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, made it all the more desirable. Gatsby was remembering back five years to when Daisy was not married and they were together:
Daisy Buchanan is married to Tom Buchanan and cousin to Nick Carraway. During World War I, many soldiers stationed by her in Louisville, were in love with her. The man who caught her eye the most was Jay Gatsby. When he was called into war, she promised him that she would wait for him. Also that upon his return they will be married. Daisy, lonely because Gatsby was at war, met Tom Buchanan. He was smart and part of a wealthy family. When he asked her to marry him, she didn't hesitate at once, and took his offering. Here, the reader first encounters how shallow Daisy is, making her a dislikeable character. Another event that Daisy is a dislikeable character is when she did not show up to Gatsby's funeral. When Daisy and Gatsby reunite, their love for each other rekindle. She often visited Gatsby at his mansion, and they were inseparable. This led Gatsby on because he dedicated his whole life into getting Daisy back, and she had no gratitude towards it. At the hotel suite scene, Daisy reveals to all that she loves Gatsby, but then also says that she loves Tom as well. This leaves the reader at awe, because after...
In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald tells the story of a romantic ideal and its ultimate destruction by the inexorable rot and decay of modern life. The story is related by Nick Carraway, who has taken a modest rental house next door to Jay Gatsby's mansion. Jay Gatsby is a young millionaire who achieves fabulous wealth for the sole purpose of recapturing the love of his former sweetheart, Daisy Fay Buchanan. Five years prior to the principal events of the story, Daisy broke off with Gatsby and married the vulgar and arrogant Tom Buchanan because he was rich and came from a respectable family. In the years since, Gatsby turns his memory of Daisy into a near-religious worship. He places her on a pedestal and transforms her into his own romantic ideal. In the process, he also transforms himself. He changes his name from Gatz to Gatsby; he invents a past, saying he was from a wealthy family and studied at Oxford; he affects the speech patterns of an English aristocrat ("old sport"), and stages parties that resemble theatrical productions.
In The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the main characters Tom and Gatsby are both similar and different in their attitudes and their status. Both Tom and Gatsby have attained great wealth and live in very lavish conditions. They differ greatly, on the other hand, in the way that they acquired this wealth, and the way in which they treat other people. Even though both characters have great amounts of wealth, they are almost complete opposites due the way in which they acquired their wealth.
In The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan is an immensely wealthy, arrogant, hypocritical man who has no respect for woman. Because Tom is so filthy rich and owns a huge, beautiful house, he assumes he can mistreat his wife Daisy. Tom constantly cheats on her while she is aware because he knows that he basically owns and attracts her with his money. Another character in The Great Gatsby that presents completely opposite characteristics than Tom Buchanan is Nick Carraway. Nick owns an average house and is not even close to as wealthy as Tom. It is demonstrated in the book how Nick is more honest and tolerant than Tom since Nick owns less. In other words, Tom is egotistical through his money and objects he owns while Nick is a more tolerable character by how he is not overly
I believe Gatsby and Tom are most different because of the way they have earned their money. Tom is more traditional, proper, and proud of his money because that is the way that he was raised. Gatsby on the other hand, has the “new money” effect and is more exuberant and carefree with his money than Tom is.
Tom Buchanan’s spontaneous spirit is both a curse and a blessing. It’s a blessing in that his wife Daisy is able to see the world because Tom is restless when it comes to settling down. “They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully,” because Tom’s spontaneous attitude couldn’t take the idea of staying in one place for very long (6). However, this spontaneous attitude couldn’t rest easy with the idea of staying loyal to his wife, Daisy, either. “Tom’s got some woman in New York,” named Myrtle who is also married (15). Although Tom tries to keep it a secret he couldn’t stop Daisy from figuring it out. He may think that he’s sly like a fox, but really everyone knows about his dirty deeds. His spontaneous attitude combined with his pride fits him perfectly as a man who cheats on his wife.
Daisy Buchanan is a fragile, flirtatious, feather floating around in the book The Great Gatsby. Her character is not portrayed as the typical women in the 1920's but instead she is known as the beauty queen. However, society knows that not all her life is flowers and cupcakes. Her marriage to Tom Buchanan is a disappointment, and his many affairs really get to her. She does not feel any maternal way towards her daughter, whom we hardly ever hear about in the story, and thinks that she is going to be just like her, "a beautiful little fool". Although it's clear that Daisy and Gatsby are in love, their love can never be. Like Daisy once told Gatsby: " I wish I would of done everything on earth with" but instead they each end up taking a different path.
Jay Gatsby is a rich man who wants nothing other than Daisy Buchanan. Back when the two were younger, they were in love. The two lovers met in Louisville before Gatsby left for war, but when he returned from the war, he discovered Daisy married Tom Buchanan. From then on, Gatsby
People of “new money”, including Gatsby, tend to flaunt their wealth, while the people of “old money” do not. Throughout chapter three, Gatsby shows off his wealth especially with decorations. “At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden” (44). Here, Nick points out that not only is Gatsby wealthy, but he shoves it down everyone's throat. In particular, Nick emphasizes the unnecessary amount of light and canvas that Gatsby shows off at his parties. In the novel “old money” in represented by the people who live in East Egg while “new money” is represented by the people who live in West Egg (9). These separate locations of residence, based on how one attained their money, heightens the overall difference between Gatsby and Daisy. Gatsby’s “new money” ways of flaunting his wealth and appearing different from people of “old money” is paralleled throughout the novel. For example, at one point when Gatsby is at the Buchanans house in “East Egg”, Gatsby is wearing a pink suit which Tom points out as clear evidence that Gatsby is an anomaly in the “old money” setting (129). This difference in appearance ends up being one of the driving forces in
In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby fights to reclaim the love he once had with Daisy Buchanan. Before Gatsby left to join the war, he and Daisy were heavily involved with each other. Daisy ended up marrying another man under the assumption that Gatsby was either dead or not going to return. Upon his return, Gatsby decided to enroll the help of Nick to rekindle what he and Daisy had some
Tom is richer than Gatsby, and has a far lesser chance of losing his money; because of the simple fact that he did not need to participate in anything illegal to gain his wealth. In fact Tom did not need to participate in anything to receive his wealth. Gatsby, because he was not born into a wealthy, well-to-do family, is in a lower class, despite being almost as wealthy as Tom is. While Gatsby treats Daisy far better than Tom does, Daisy still favors Tom because it is far easier to live with someone who has a predictable pattern to their actions than someone who is all over the place. All of these coincide with each other to cause Daisy to think that she loves Tom more than she does Gatsby.
In the Great Gatsby, the characters of Tom and Gatsby are more alike then they appear to be. However, they also share some differences too. Both characters, Tom and Gatsby, use many people throughout the story. Also, neither of them really, truly loves Daisy. One of their great differences is that Gatsby is much pleasant than Tom. Tom is much more egotistic than Gatsby. They both have two different personalities, yet can relate to the same secret affairs that occurs throughout the book.
Daisy Buchanan seems ethereal in The Great Gatsby. For Jay Gatsby, she is the reason he made his fortune. However, Daisy is not as pure or as innocent as Gatsby makes her out to be. About five years prior to the setting of the novel, Gatsby and Daisy fell in love with each other. Gatsby had then been sent off to war, but now he returns to win back his love, Daisy. Unfortunately for Gatsby this is an impossible task because while Gatsby was away, Daisy married Tom Buchanan, an arrogant aristocrat. Daisy successfully wields power in her society through marriage and attains higher social status. Daisy will never leave T...
Throughout The Great Gatsby, Gatsby's lack of taste is evident, which leads to the upper class's rejection of him. Gatsby repeatedly displays his wealth in excessive ways. Gatsby throws extravagant parties, buys flamboyant clothes, and purchases an opulent car and mansion. Throughout the novel, these displays of wealth are met by criticism from those that Gatsby is trying to impress. Tom Buchanan, Daisy's husband, and a man of inherited wealth, detests Gatsby.