Considered an American classic, F. Fitzgerald’s tale of The Great Gatsby can be summarised by the creation, the attainment and the loss of a man’s dream. But it also delves into the roaring twenties and falls into an era that has an almost dreamlike quality. Where the parties are loud, the people fickle and the falls from grace are brutal. The Great Gatsby contains characters that are masked, masks which are all the source or object of the fatal flaws: lust or greed. Although the common theme of The Great Gatsby is love, the true themes are lust and greed, which are the source of the book’s dark scenes. The true natures of the characters are never revealed, only their words and emotions, but never their personalities. And by extension, the …show more content…
While the couple are two opposing people, they do have a similar demeanour, one which breathes wealth and privilege from their pores. Perfectly explained by Nick: They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made (188). There are multiple instances in the book where Tom is not only physically abusive towards Daisy, but also physically imposing towards everyone else, he was one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax (10). His constant brutish nature leaves Daisy in a constant frail state, her voice a “deathless song,” akin to Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, who suffered from a major nervous breakdown during the 1920’s. While their union was a fickle and unfulfilling one and caused both of them to have affairs, they did end up keeping faithful to each other in the end. Where Daisy chooses Tom, or rather his money, over Gatsby and Tom in turn protects Daisy from the investigation of her hit-and-run victim by moving away and leaving no forwarding