The Great Gatsby Research Paper

Have you ever thought about why people have affairs? Many people have affairs for various reasons. Cheating can be seen commonly, regardless of whether it is present or past. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Daisy cheats on her husband, Tom, and has an affair with Gatsby. Daisy’s affair with Gatsby was not based on love. She has an affair with Gatsby because of the neglect of her husband, replicative life, and also because she was attached to the past with Gatsby. People who have unhappy married lives tend to crave attention and admiration. With an unhappy marriage to Tom, Daisy wanted to be loved. As Tom had multiple affairs with different women, Daisy was neglected. A study in the Journal of Sexual and Marital Therapy found that

He boosted her ego and made her feel desirable again as she realized how he spent the past five years acquiring wealth just for her. When Gatsby invites Daisy over to his house, he throws his expensive shirts toward Daisy as she cries and says “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such-such beautiful shirts before” (Fitzgerald 98). In this quote, Daisy finds out about Gatsby’s feelings for her and she gets emotional because instead of her neglecting husband Tom, Gatsby shows how he is willing to do anything to be with her. One of Daisy’s main reasons for her affair was to get loved by someone since her husband didn’t show up anymore. She wanted to be cherished and appreciated by someone, and it turned out to be Gatsby. Just like Gatsby, Daisy was also attached to the past. Especially for them, their relationship did not end because they wanted it to; Gatsby couldn’t come back to Daisy and she couldn’t wait longer for marriage, which led to their breakup. However, when Gatsby shows up five years later, she has a flashback of her youth and she starts to wonder what would have happened if she made different decisions in the

Manly says that when a relationship ends too soon in your mind, it fantasizes about “coulda-woulda-shoulda scenarios” that could have happened if you were still in the relationship (“Why Can’t I Get Over My Ex? 13 Psychological Reasons You’re Stuck in the Past and How To Move Forward”). As so, Daisy has an affair with Gatsby because she is attached to the past with Gatsby since he reminds her of her younger times. In Chapter 8, Nick describes how Gatsby viewed Daisy when they met for the first time. To Gatsby, “she was the first “nice” girl he had ever known”(Fitzgerald 155). When Daisy reunites with Gatsby, she has flashbacks of her young, beautiful times and this triggers her emotions to have an affair out of memories. By this, you can tell that Daisy started an affair with Gatsby by being attached to the past and having flashbacks. Daisy, being rich and having mostly everything she wants, finds her life boring which is why she starts an affair with Gatsby. She wanted something or someone to give her excitement in her life, and that was Gatsby. He was not only an escape from her boring life, but an escape from her boring marriage life