Daisy's Materialism In The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is an American classic. Set in the 1920s, this book “explores the idea that pursuit of wealth, rather than happiness, dominated human thinking” (sahbam16). Source describes Fitzgerald’s exemplar literature as “bitter satire, with Fitzgerald keen to expose” the endless materialism and lack of the American dream that grasped many individuals during these times. In this novella, protagonist Nick Carraway tells the story of Jay Gatsby and his extreme determination to return to his former lover, Daisy Buchanan. However, Daisy is torn between her true love, Gatsby, and her pompous, pretentious life with her husband, Tom. Tom Buchanan is purely motivated to exterminate the forbidden love through his own jealousy

She is truly the perfect match for Tom; their materialism and desire for fortune and fame have no limits. Towards the beginning of the novel, Tom insists on bringing Nick to the city, and the two stop by a car repair shop owned by Mr. Wilson. His wife, Myrtle, is secretly involved in an affair with Tom, and Tom has no qualms about cheating on his wife, as he has done it numerous times before and will most likely continue doing it. When Myrtle gets murdered, Tom is only upset when he sees her body, and it is more like a natural reaction of being disturbed and confused. Myrtle’s body holds a great amount of symbolism, as “her left breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to listen for the heart beneath” (Fitzgerald 137). The fact that a part of her womanhood was demolished shows that she is just a woman and not a real person, demonstrating that Tom only sees women as objects or toys that he can play

He gets immensely jealous of Gatsby and Daisy’s affair when he himself has bedded multiple other women, proving how much of a hypocrite he is. He is also proven to be misogynistic because of this, truly believing that a man can cheat but a woman cannot. After Tom discovers Myrtle’s body, he finds Mr. Wilson panicking in his house. Mr. Wilson wants to blame Tom for the death of Myrtle, and he is clearly in a mentally weak spot. Tom takes this opportunity to insist that Gatsby was the one driving the vehicle that killed Myrtle, and that Wilson should get his revenge on him. This shows that Tom is childish because he is making intense claims without evidence, and he is jumping to conclusions. Nick compares Tom to a child when they coincidentally meet after Gatsby’s death. At first, Nick refuses to shake Tom’s hand because he is disgusted with his actions that ultimately led to the death of Gatsby. After an attempt at understanding and justifying the behavior of Tom and Daisy, Nick says, “I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt suddenly as though I were talking to a child” (Fitzgerald 179). Nick believes that Tom did not know any better because of his carelessness, and children often do not know any better when it comes to mistakes that they have