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Myrtle's Dream In The Great Gatsby

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The Great Gatsby Essay Dreams are often futile and pointless. This was certainly the case for many characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Set in a fictional 1920s New York City suburb, multiple characters from different social classes interact with each other, all trying to accomplish their dream. Jay Gatsby desperately tries to attract Daisy, while Daisy’s husband, Tom, pursues an affair with a poor woman, Myrtle. The Great Gatsby proves that chasing an unworthy dream will lead to tragedy, because it forces one to be something that they are not, no one will ever measure up to that unworthy dream, and that person will never be able to fit in. First of all, chasing an unworthy dream will force one to be something they are not. …show more content…

She packed the tiny apartment as if it were a huge mansion. But it is not a mansion, just like Myrtle is not rich. Nick also notes that the pictures on the wall don’t correspond with each other and clash with the colors of the room. Not only does Myrtle not have space for rich living, she doesn’t have the taste. She has spent all her life living poor, so when she acquires Tom’s money, she doesn’t actually know how to spend it. She just buys on impulse, causing the room to look disoriented, further proving the point that she isn’t rich like she would like to be. This lavish and fake lifestyle was eventually discovered by her husband. When Myrtle tried to be something that she wasn’t, she ended up ruining her marriage and destroying her life. Fitzgerald, through The Great Gatsby, also proves that chasing an unworthy dream will lead to tragedy because no one can measure up to their unworthy dream. In chapter nine, after Tom gets in a fight with Daisy, Tom lets Daisy ride home with Gatsby. That is because Tom knows Gatsby will never measure up to Daisy’s expectations. Daisy has always been rich, which gives her an old aristocratic

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Yet her thoughts were still affected by money:” I want to get one of those dogs she said earnestly”(Fitzgerald 27) When Myrtle first gets together with Tom she immediately starts to become greedy and wants to buy a dog with Toms money. Leading to Tom being intimidated by her which makes her out to be crazy because her and Tom both lose control of their actions resulting in a brutal ending. Tom to Myrtle represents the life she doesnt have and the wealthy lifestyle Wilson couldn’t give her:”Beat me! He heard her cry..Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward!” As soon as Myrtle was told she was going to move away from Tom and his money she thought now that her life was over, causing her to throw herself into traffic and die.

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This description helps the reader sympathize a little with Myrtle and her major affection for the almighty dollar. For Tom it is easy to see Myrtle as an undeserving subject of his respect, because he plucked her from a town that people can not bare to look at “for as long as half an hour”. This little borough holds no place in Myrtle's heart. She just wants to spend her time shopping, away from the stench of

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This quote shows how Myrtle is denying the fact that she is poor. When she is with Tom her whole personality changes and Nick noticed that the first time he meet her. “ ‘ Neither of them can stand the person they’re married to.’ ‘Can’t they ‘ ‘ Can’t stand them’ [...] ‘Doesn't she like Wilson either?

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(p.27). Tom eventually broke down, buying her the dog, and the dog wasn’t the only thing he bought for her. As stated, Tom also bought Myrtle an apartment just so they two of them could be alone. Because Myrtle doesn’t work hard for what she gets, she would never make it in the upper class. She expects everything to be given to her, a belief given to her by tom.

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“The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it, and contiguous to absolutely nothing.” (Fitzgerald, 24). She carries herself in a way that a financially prosperous woman would, although, in reality, she lives in a dingy garage with a man whom she doesn’t love. Myrtle is so besotted with leading a lifestyle similar to that of a person with high social status that she pursues Tom Buchanan, a man of high status and wealth. Her desire to be with Tom is fueled by her desire to be the affluent woman she portrays herself to be.

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Daisy was born into money so she does not want to marry a man that is not wealthy. Gatsby knew this when he said,´´Her voice is full of money´´(p120 fitzgerald), this shocked Nick because he had been trying to figure out her voice. When Tom was talking about his book, Rise of Colored

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In the novel, Fitzgerald depicts the character Myrtle as someone who is pursuing a luxurious and wealthy life to the point that Myrtle is willing to give up her morality in trade for it. Being born into a family of the lower class and having a strong desire for money, Myrtle did not choose to earn the money through hard work but rather by having an affair with a married man- Tom, as a married woman. The detailed descriptions of the contrary between Myrtle as “Mrs. Wilson” who wears a “spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine” and “contain[s] no facet or gleam of beauty” (Fitzgerald 29), and “Myrtle” who dresses in an “elaborate afternoon dress of cream colored chiffon” establish a sense of dream and reality which thoroughly reveal her inner greed for wealth and to become a member of the upper class. Her sick desire for money that has completely taken

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Fitzgerald's focus on Myrtle's need for money reiterates she only loves money ignoring the fact she was trying to protect her escape from her reality with George. These expensive pieces of furniture were her only way of making sure to escape from the clutches of poverty and live a life of luxury. Even during her death, the author does not let her die in peace. “Her left breast was swinging loose like a flap”(Pg137) Even during her death she is described as a mere piece of meat, one that served as a toy to Tom.

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Although the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald emphasizes the parties and prosperity of the American 1920's, it reveals many major characters meeting tragic ends. The characters who meet these ends - Jay Gatsby, Myrtle Wilson, and George Wilson - possess the same tragic characteristic: they endeavor for something more out of their lives than what they have. This ambition for what they could not have ultimately spelled their doom: Gatsby wanted money and Daisy; Myrtle wanted wealth and luxury, and sought it from Tom Buchanan; Wilson earned what he could only to please Myrtle. The Great Gatsby reveals a tragic nature through the trials and tribulations these characters endure to progress and prosper, only to receive death for their ambition. The exciting and wild time period of the "Roaring Twenties" provides a stark contrast to the deaths in order to further highlight the tragic nature of the novel, and leaves a theme that even those with the most hope and strong ambitions can fail and die miserably, no matter how much money they have.

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In the 1920’s, everyone strived for this idea of the American Dream, which established a perfect life, but the thought is not all it is cracked up to be. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is the story of a mysterious millionaire, Jay Gatsby, told in the voice of Nick Carraway. This is a story about eccentric parties, affairs, and long lost love. Jay Gatsby has benn in love with Daisy Buchannan for a long time, but there is a twist; Daisy has a husband, Tom. Tom is also having an affair with Myrtle, who is married to George Wilson.

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The Great Gatsby CEW The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, indicates that the American Dream is not completely attainable, which is shown through Gatsby, who strives to find meaning in life by trying to achieve his inconceivable future. Gatsby was a motivated young man who “believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (Fitzgerald 189). The future that Gatsby wants with his dream girl, Daisy Buchanan, is more of a fantasy than a reality because she has a different lifestyle and family of her own. Gatsby realizes as he is with Daisy that night that she “tumbled short of his dreams- not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion”(Fitzgerald 101).

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Myrtle was willing to have an affair with Tom because he had money, he was able to give Myrtle the life she had dreamed about living and experiencing “walking through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: 'Did you see that? Did you see that, my dear?'"(22). In the presence of Tom and his wealth Myrtle acted as if her husband meant nothing to her all because Tom had money. Myrtle's death was caused by her running out of the street yelling at Gatsby's car presuming it was Toms and Tom was driving it.

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Just as Daisy wishes she had married Gatsby and his “new money,” Myrtle wishes she had married a wealthier man. Myrtle cluelessly married George thinking he had more money; however, when she realized he wasn’t as wealthy as she originally thought, she began an affair with Tom, a more affluent man. Fitzgerald portrays Myrtle as solely going after wealth and being upset when deceived; similarly, Daisy is mesmerized by Gatsby’s opulent wardrobe and chases after his opulent wealth. Additionally, Myrtle buys a dog that she overlooks and ignores, showing not only her desire for material objects, but her disregard for them even if they are a living, breathing animal (she would not be a good mother). This detail, like the shirts, has little significance to the story other than to endorse Fitzgerald’s idea that women buy things without consideration or respect, showing how materialistic they are.

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The Disillusionment of the American Dream is evident in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The main characters that exhibit this through their lives are; Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson and Mr. Jay Gatsby. All of these characters hold on to their dream, but all of these characters are somehow let down. The first character, Daisy Buchanan, has the dream of love. She grew up in a very wealthy home.

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Just like Daisy, Myrtle chooses money over love. She cheats on her husband George with Tom. Myrtle was a woman from the lower class who desired to be a part of the higher class. Tom spoiled Myrtle and gave her the lifestyle she always wanted. She belittles her husband and talk bad about him because he is not at the top of the social ladder where Tom is.

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