The Great Gatsby's Song 'Sentimental Me'

The song “Sentimental Me” by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rogers describes the relationship between Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. Although in the song the narrator is presumably a woman, her feelings are much more applicable to Gatsby than they are to Daisy. The narrator of the song calls her lover, “a dream [...] that came true”. Comparably, in The Great Gatsby, Daisy is the embodiment of Gatsby’s American Dream of grandeur and high status. Once Gatsby and Daisy reunite and begin a relationship, Gatsby’s dream comes true. The narrator refers to herself as “sentimental me” and to her lover as “poor romantic you”, and says that “dreaming dreams is all that [they] can do”. This is similar to Daisy and Gatsby’s relationship because

To “return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly” would be impossible for Gatsby to do, so he is simply “dreaming dreams” like the narrator of the song. Daisy, like the narrator’s lover in the song, can be described as “poor romantic you”. When Daisy first hears Gatsby’s name from Nick, she immediately perks up and asks “Gatsby? [...] What Gatsby?” (11). Her sudden interest in the conversation implies that even after five years of being apart, she still thinks of Gatsby and is immediately interested in reuniting with him. Her sudden curiosity about a man she knew for only a short time implies that she believes that it would be possible to pick up their romantic relationship where they left off. Despite the fact that she is married and that she and Gatsby had been apart for five years, she still has hope, which classifies her as a “poor romantic”. In addition, the narrator of the song says that she “is not the kind that merely flirts;/[she] just love[s] and love[s] until it hurts”. This is exactly the same as the way Gatsby acts toward Daisy: despite five years of being apart, Gatsby obsesses over Daisy, and made his entire fortune in order to please