Examples Of Pressure In The Great Gatsby

851 Words4 Pages

The Murderous Pressures of Society In modern day society, there are pressures and stigmas everywhere. Many of these, pressure people into conforming to a certain lifestyle. The lifestyle of the 1920’s represented in The Great Gatsby was filled with pressures to have the perfect American life. The book is narrated by the young Nick Carraway who gets sucked into the lifestyle of the wealthiest people in New York. After all of the secrets and mysteries are exposed, three tragedies occur. Many people concur that these deaths occurred because of Daisy and Gatsby’s love, however they actually happened because of how society pushes the American Dream on everyone. For the era that The Great Gatsby is set in, the American Dream consisted of a married …show more content…

Tom got everything he could ever want in life such as a beautiful wife, an amazing house, popularity, and the image of a perfect life. Tom got the American Dream and wanting to keep it as well as Gatsby wanting it is what killed Gatsby and George Wilson, Myrtle’s husband. “Gatsby walked over and stood beside her. “Daisy, that’s all over now,” he said earnestly. “It doesn’t matter any more. Just tell him the truth- that you never loved him- and it’s all wiped out forever”” (Fitzgerald 131-132). The idea of having Daisy all to himself and having the perfect life with her lead Gatsby to start a fight with her husband. The fight went on with Daisy feeling nervous and shaken in the end, and when Gatsby let her drive she hit Myrtle. After this George did some of his own investigating which lead him to believe that Myrtle was having an affair with the owner of the yellow car. When Nick confronts Tom about what he told George he says, “”I told him the truth,” he said. “He came to the door while we were getting ready to leave, and when I sent down word that we weren’t in he tried to force his way upstairs. He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn’t told him who owned the car. His hand was on a revolver in his pocket every minute he was in the house… He [Gatsby] ran over Myrtle like you’d run over a dog and never even stopped his car””(Fitzgerald 178). After telling George that Gatsby’s car was the one that hit Myrtle, George went to his house