Examples Of Daisy In The Great Gatsby

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True love is hard to come by, and in New York City in the 1920’s it was just as or even more scarce than it is today. The Great Gatsby is a novel set in the roaring twenties in which the main characters who are romantically involved do not genuinely love one another, namely Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby loved Daisy only because of her wealth and beauty and would not have desired her if she did not possess these qualities. Daisy would have loved Gatsby only if he did not have certain flaws. Neither of them truly loved the other with a genuine love, a love that remains in spite of another person's faults. Nevertheless, Gatsby possessed a deep want to acquire Daisy because of her desirable attributes. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald …show more content…

Gatsby lives on the peninsula of West Egg symbolizing his new wealth while Daisy lives in East Egg symbolizing her old wealth. Nick’s description of the eggs sheds some light on the division between their social classes due to the different types of wealth they possess. “To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size. I lived at West Egg, the-well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them” (Fitzgerald 5). The difference between the two eggs is representative of the contrast between Daisy’s and Gatsby’s social circles. Those living in West Egg and those coming to Gatsby’s parties are no less rich than those in East Egg. But, they remain unrefined in their manners: They are not respectable. “Gatsby's lavish existence in the nouveau riche Long Island community of West Egg, moreover, cannot ever compensate for his lack of the more pedigreed [old] wealth of East Egg” (“The Great Gatsby” 2). One can gather that Gatsby, as much as he wants to impress Daisy, will never be able to truly provide her with the life she is accustomed to and dreams of spending with him. This is further expressed by the fact that Gatsby grew up in the Midwest. “Despite the fictionalized accounts of Long Island, Fitzgerald uses New York City as an undisguised symbol of the swiftly changing American landscape, while his home, the Midwest, remains a symbol of the pure, untainted American landscape of the past” (Palladino 4). Gatsby began poor and untainted, but gave himself over to corruption when he moved to NYC in his pursuit of wealth. But, he can not comprehend the fact that no amount of wealth can ever compensate for his lack of the type of wealth Daisy has and the social status it provides. It is evident that the geography of the novel is used to