Daisy's Death In The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, puts to the test the notions and ideals associated with wealth. He wrangles with the beliefs of money in relationship to power, prestige, and sexuality. However, Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s litmus test for these different experiments, dies near the end of the story and puts into question all the designs to which Gatsby has been sculpted in our minds throughout the text. While most of the book seems to purport, at least in degree, the idea that “money makes a man,” the death of Gatsby strikes a harsh blow to that philosophy in showing that Gatsby’s death resembles a cleansing experience for himself, closely resembling those of baptism and circumcision.
Fitzgerald alludes to this cleansing experience

The first instance in which we see Gatsby’s allusion of himself glitch occurs momentarily before his reunion with Daisy: “Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes” (86). Gatsby is nearly in total breakdown before this meeting, almost to the brink of giving up his dream and seeing the reality of the situation, but then, after meeting Daisy “the sun shone again… [and] there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed” (88-89). The washing away of his dream hadn’t been completed, and he remained the same dusty

The gardener tells Gatsby that he is going to drain the pool that day, but Gatsby replies, “Don’t do it to-day,” before turning “apologetically” to Nick and saying, “you know, old sport, I’ve never used that pool all summer?” (153). This is the first time that Gatsby has ever apologized to Nick, and it happens only mere minutes before the “only compliment [Nick] ever gave him [Gatsby].” Gatsby suggests that Daisy might call him later and Nick “supposes so.” They shake hands, which is also a first, before he gives Gatsby the compliment: “They’re [Tom and the people that he represents] a rotten crowd…you’re worth the whole [explicit] bunch put together” (154). Something is different in Gatsby and Nick senses it, which he makes clear when he suggests of Gatsby, in light of the phone call Gatsby awaits from Daisy, that “Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared” (161). Nick believes that Gatsby’s dream has vanished and that Gatsby is coming to the stark realization of