The Great Gatsby Daisy Quotes Analysis

A Daisy by Any Other Name Every great story needs both a villain and a hero, and the greatest stories are often characterized by their abilities to blur the line between the two. In The Great Gatsby, a novel by Scott F. Fitzgerald set in the Eggs of New York, a line can be drawn between Daisy and Gatsby, Daisy and Nick, or even Daisy and Tom quite easily. Though a reader’s first impulse may be to cast Daisy as the villain, she lands the role of the victim rather than the tormentor. The central male characters in the novel, objectify, oppress, and project their own ideals onto Daisy, which reduces her to the shadow of a character so damaged she is incapable of being her own person. Without any great leaps of faith, one can safely assume that

“Suddenly with a strained sound Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily. ‘They’re such beautiful shirts,’ she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. ‘It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such- such beautiful shirts before” (98). Often, critics have simply inferred from this quote that Daisy is incredibly materialistic, and have left their analysis of her character barely brushing the surface. Daisy cries because the man who once looked at her like she was a person and indispensable is now trying to buy her, objectifying her once more in a way she never expected him to. Daisy loves the beauty of the shirts but hates what they mean for her. She has exhausted her ability to rebel against a world that expects her to be demeaned in this way, and cannot articulate her feelings. She justifies her tears with the values of materialism that have been forced upon her, seeing how she is treated as an object herself. The objectification of Daisy is complete when Gatsby tells Nick, “Her voice is full of money,” (127) towards the end of the novel. Daisy’s voice is one of the most mystical parts about her, it represents her- enchanting and beautiful. However, Gatsby and Nick don’t know how to value Daisy outside of the money values that govern their lives, and continue to simplify her to

Tom expects Daisy to behave as the item he purchased for three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, becoming angry when she indicates she might have a mind of her own. Gatsby has had five years to build up Daisy in his mind, and even Nick acknowledges that “There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams- not through her own fault but because the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything” (101). Though it is clear that not a soul could have lived up to Gatsby’s fantasy, she is still accused of ‘failing’ Gatsby and being responsible for his death. Daisy is simply the vehicle for Gatsby’s impossible dream, and not really a person to Gatsby at all. Even Nick projects only what he wants to see upon her, after one of Gatsby’s parties. He sees her distaste for the party and says, “She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand” (114). However, Nick is misinterprets Daisy’s sentiment, she sees an awfulness in the lack of simplicity- the showiness of money repels her and her image of Gatsby in those simple days when they first met fully contradicts what she sees now. But Nick sees only what he wants to see. He thrives on simplicity, and so reduces her character and emotions to something simple enough for him to safely comprehend. It is not