The Great Gatsby Research Paper

It is often said that The Great Gatsby is a love story about Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan rekindling their past relationship and fighting the barriers of their socioeconomic statuses. However, by this line of thinking, The Great Gatsby would have ended with Gatsby and Daisy marrying in Louisville, a fitting ending for their supposed love story. Nevertheless, Gatsby and Daisy didn’t receive their fairytale ending because The Great Gatsby is not a love story about their relationship. On the contrary, Gatsby’s impoverished childhood resulted in his infatuation with money, similarly, Daisy’s old money background caused her to rely on money. Their shared love for money drew them to each other. Instead of a love story between two people, it is a

Daisy had imagined that she would retain her luxurious lifestyle while gaining more wealth by marrying Gatsby. However, her flaw is that she loves the status and stability of the old money class — a caste of people who’d inherited their money—, more than her relationship with Gatsby. As a result, Daisy stays with Tom. Similarly, Gatsby fell in love with the idea of the American Dream, leading him to believe he could acquire success and wealth despite his humble origin. Gatsby’s ultimate flaw was that he was unable to separate his delusions from reality, his desires for respectable wealth and all things valuable—including Daisy, led to his demise. Gatsby loved the wealth that Daisy represented, and the status she brought into their relationship more than he loved Daisy as an individual. While retelling Gatsby’s first interaction with Daisy in Louisville, Nick states, “She was the first “nice” girl he had ever known. In various unrevealed capacities he had come in contact with such people, but always with indiscernible barbed wire between. He found her excitingly desirable”

When Daisy is visiting Gatsby, Nick observes her disgust towards West Egg and the new money society—a class of people who had recently obtained wealth, often by illegal means, in the 1920s: “But the rest offended her — and inarguably because it wasn’t a gesture but an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented “place” that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village — appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short-cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand” (83). Daisy was disgusted by the new money generation, a common view within the old money class. Despite her feelings towards Gatsby, a member of the new money generation, she chose wealth. Leaving Tom meant leaving financial stability; additionally, marrying Gatsby would force her into the position of a wife in the new money class, resulting in ridicule by her old money associates. Daisy prioritizes wealth over love, causing her to stay with