Daisy's Use Of Materialism In The Great Gatsby

America in the 1920’s was a place for self-absorbed desires and pseudo appearances of wealth and happiness. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the audience looks through the empty lives of three characters from the novel, Jay Gatsby, and the Buchanans, Daisy and Tom. Fitzgerald uses the character's’ trials and tribulations to depict the concept that chasing the hollow American Dream leads only to misery and superfluous materialism. Although each individual had various intentions, in the end, they all displayed immoral actions and toxic behavior in attempt to attain their ideal lives. The era of the 1920s gave hope to people from different classes, ranging from the poor to the wealthy. Gatsby’s desire to have it all—money, class, power, and Daisy, no

Daisy Buchanan luckily hails from a wealthy, stable background and could easily get away with being careless and acting dimwitted. Although Daisy Buchanan frequently faked her obliviousness, in reality she acknowledged how women are treated poorly, and hopes that her daughter, Pamela, would grow up to “be a fool – that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool " (Fitzgerald 17). Daisy’s materialistic views and cynicism illustrate how she prioritizes money over love. Daisy’s husband, Tom, has recurring affairs with Myrtle Wilson, a lower class woman who tries to be on the same eloquent level as the Buchanans. Daisy is repeatedly betrayed by her husband, with another woman. She can’t free herself from the constraints of wealthy society in the past or now. Although Daisy loved Gatsby at one point, she ended up marrying Tom. During Tom and Gatsby’s argument, Tom sneers and makes snide comments at Gatsby’s background and upbringing, claiming how he knows that his newfound wealth from bootlegging is seedy, Daisy is affected and eventually concludes her rendezvous with Gatsby and chooses Tom over him