Compare And Contrast Gatsby And Tom Buchanan

“Gatsby vs. Buchanan” In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, there are several main characters that share numerous similarities and differences. These characteristics are what separate every character from each other to give them all their own personalities and to give the story different moods throughout. Two characters from this novel that are extremely alike, but extraordinarily different at the same time are Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan. Three areas between these two main characters that can be easily compared and contrasted, and prove that Gatsby is a better person, are their wealth, their backgrounds, and their personalities. Jay and Tom both turned out to become exceptionally wealthy men. With their large amounts of money, both

Throughout his early years, Tom was always one of the more popular people of his age. He did well enough with his grades, but more importantly to him, he was a football star throughout his high school and college years with his strong and athletic build (Fitzgerald 10). His football ability and parents’ money was able to help Tom attend New Haven University, where he was one of the greatest players to ever step on the field by this time. On the other hand, Jay came from a hard-working farming family in North Dakota (Fitzgerald 104). Even though his family lost sleep over every penny they earned, unfortunately, they were extremely unsuccessful. To earn his way to college, Gatsby had to put in a tremendous amount of work in order to be accepted, but ended up dropping out after only two weeks (Gatsby 105). Gatsby wasn’t brought up into money. Instead, he was able to catch a break when he ran into a man named Dan Cody. Dan had a yacht anchored down in Lake Superior, and Gatsby decided to alert him that bad weather was coming so that Dan could be safe on the water. By doing this, Gatsby was given his chance as Cody immediately offered him a job to pay him back for protecting him. While Gatsby was working with Cody, he became motivated to become successful himself in admiration of Dan Cody. After Cody’s death, Gatsby lets this drive him to gain riches of his own. However, he did this in a

Both are wealthy, and although Jay isn’t perfect and didn’t arrive to the top the correct way, he is extremely unselfish with his money. The rough childhood Jay went through also created major difficulty for him to be successful, but he went out and did what he was forced to regardless. This shows the grit and determination that Jay possessed to be successful; unlike Tom, who grew up into riches and was always set up for glory. Jay may have committed numerous wrong choices in his life; however, his personality is what truly causes him to be a better person than Tom. Nice guys are said to always finish last, which is proven in The Great Gatsby as Jay’s personality is what wins him the love of his life, Daisy, who knew all along that Jay is a better person than