Relationships In Gatsby

Throughout The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the main focus of the plot appears to be on the erratic relationships that Nick, the narrator, observes over his time spent in West Egg. The main relationship however is the romance between Nick’s wealthy neighbor Jay Gatsby, and Nick’s cousin Daisy Buchanan, who is married to a rich man named Tom Buchanan. Over the course of the book, Gatsby’s “love” for Daisy leads both of them to pursue an affair that ends in the death of Gatsby, by a man who mistook him for his wife’s killer. The book, at first glance, attempts to make the romance of Gatsby and Daisy seem like a wonderful heart-wrenching reunion of two lovers after years of being apart from one another. However, there are many signs that

It is first observed that Gatsby feels as though wealth is the only way to be worthy of Daisy 's love, and that he believes it is the only reason Daisy even married Tom in the first place, because Tom was a wealthy man who showed interest in her, not because of who he is as a person. His outlook displaying this belief originated in his youth, because of the influence of Dan Cody. Dan Cody was a millionaire who, after meeting Gatsby at a lake while he was still only the son of unsuccessful farmers, employed him for five years and in turn exposed Gatsby to the grand and lavish life that he had never known. Before his encounter, Gatsby’s name was James Gatz but he changed it in order to appear more like the type of people who Cody Would have known. However Nick does in fact state (after hearing the story from Gatsby himself) that “I suppose that [Gatsby] had the name ready for a long time...The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island sprang from his platonic conception of himself ” (98). The implication that Gatsby already had the name picked out shows his dissatisfaction for the simple life that he lived and his desire to become someone else, someone who could pull off the guise of a gentleman who was born of old money. Nick stating that the new name was because of Gatsby’s “platonic conception of himself” indicates that Gatsby believed that he understood his values enough to know that throughout his life, he will try to aim for that goal of becoming a wealthy man who has a sphere of influence, basically, the American dream. These conceptions of Gatsby and his ideals about wealth are tools that the author uses to demonstrate the reasons that