Examples Of Daisy Buchanan In The Great Gatsby

The American Dream is the idea that one can change their economic and social circumstances with hard work in order to achieve success and happiness. Achieving the American dream is in the eye of its beholder, however, dreamers are often bound to be unsatisfied, always wishing for more. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses characters to comment on ideas and uses Daisy Buchanan to represent not only the quintessential woman during the twenties but also the enticing American Dream. Daisy is beautiful, wealthy, and of high position in society; she has the big house, the car, the family, and the money, all aspects of the American dream. Daisy Buchanan is the epitome of the American Dream: she is alluring but ultimately

She emanates beauty and charm with a voice that “the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again” (9). Daisy uses her outward appearance of perfection as a facade for attention. All through her life, she has been able to be “the most popular of all the young girls” and sought for by all the “excited young officers...[demanding] the privilege of monopolizing her that night” even for just an hour (74). Just like how the sound and idea of American Dream and its benefits draws people in, even the sound of Daisy’s voice is enough to capture the attention of the men in her life, rendering them helpless to her. Fitzgerald presents her as a dream girl, but as the novel progresses, she falls short of any and all

She kills Myrtle and never takes responsibilities for her crime. Instead, she allows Gatsby to take the blame, leading Wilson to wrongfully murder him. Thus she is responsible for all the travesty around her. She is indirectly responsible for her lover Gatsby’s death, yet she still chooses a comfortable life with Tom instead. In the end, Nick shows that Daisy’s allure has repercussions. She is “careless...[she] smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into [her] money or [her] vast carelessness...and let other people clean up the mess [she] had made” (179). Nick condemns her moral carelessness and realizes that there is no real affection behind the allure of Daisy, rather Gatsby now understands that his source fascination was that “her voice is full of money...That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it...High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl” (120). The allure of Daisy is wealth and status, not her beauty or charm or even love. While the American dream may seem enchanting, the reality is that the American Dream is not a dream of success rather a dream of